Kate Farrington, Ph.D., is a philosopher and artist-in-social-practice doing creative research at the intersections of art, climate change, and environmental ethics.
Her core philosophical practice engages the ideas of place-as-medium, thinking-through-place, and shared authorship of place.
In 2024, she was a grantee for the City of Boston's Un-Monument public art initiative, sponsored by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture and supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Her project, "Future Monument to the Trees of the Public Garden," is a 3-day temporary monument that presents an audio walking tour of Odes to Trees penned by members of the public, launched to the public on November 9th, 10, & 11, 2024.
In 2022, she co-founded the Ocean School Collective (OSC), an artistic research laboratory dedicated to promoting "ocean thinking" as a new environmental ethic, expanding the cultural sphere to include the world of whales, currently being hosted by the Ocean Alliance in Gloucester, MA, one of the oldest scientific organizations dedicated to whale research and ocean conservation.
Over the past sixteen years, she has received numerous awards and recognition, including participation in the 2022 NEH Summer Institute, “Engaging Geography in the Humanities", a 2018 Cornelia Endowed Fund from Montserrat College of Art for travel in South Korea, and the Annamae and Allan Crite Prize (first prize) from Harvard University, cited for “singular dedication to learning and the arts."
She is a college professor teaching across the humanities and specializing in philosophy, contemporary art & theory, and environmental ethics. She has taught in numerous institutions throughout the greater Boston area, including Montserrat College of Art, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Endicott College, Wentworth Institute of Technology, and Emerson College.
Her book Place-as-Medium and New Grounds for Thinking in Contemporary Art is coming out this year with Routledge.
