Deborah Fisher

Deborah Fisher is an artist and creative leader working to expand the roles artists play in civic life. She is the founding Executive Director of A Blade of Grass, a non-profit solely dedicated to nurturing socially engaged art. Fisher has served as an art, strategy, and philanthropy advisor to Shelley and Donald Rubin, and has worked in many capacities at the intersection of art and civic life in New York City, including as studio manager at Socrates Sculpture Park, and as an educator and curriculum developer for the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment. Her approach to leadership work is deeply informed by her training as a sculptor, particularly her experience making public art.

Fisher is a proud board member of the Center for Artistic Activism, and writes and lectures internationally about arts funding and socially engaged art. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good edited by Johanna Burton, Shannon Jackson, and Dominic Willsdon; Temporary Art Review; and Americans for the Arts. She has presented at the Creative Time Summit, Open Engagement, Americans for The Arts, Hammer Museum, Otis College of Art and Design, Portland State University, Lancaster University, Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, and the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley.