David Velasco is a writer based in New York. He was editor-in-chief of Artforum from 2017 to 2023, and before that, he worked as an editor at artforum.com for twelve years. In October 2023, he was dismissed from Artforum for publishing an open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

In 2016, he founded “Modern Dance,” a series on contemporary choreographers, with New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and edited the volume Sarah Michelson. Last year, he received a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation. He graduated from Reed College in 2000 with a degree in Anthropology. He is currently working on a book.

His talk focuses on what it means to take up our authority in our roles, drawing on experiences and descriptions of three moments during his tenure at Artforum, in which he participated in some form of change beyond the art world.