Suzanne Lacy

Lacy makes public space for conversations that rarely happen there. The Crystal Quilt, staged in 1987 in the atrium of the IDS Center in Minneapolis, seated 430 women over 60 at tables on a vast quilt-patterned floor, talking about ageing while the public watched from the balconies; she spent two years organising it with local women's groups. Between the Door and the Street, in 2013, gathered hundreds of activists on the stoops of a Brooklyn street, and the front steps of the Brooklyn Museum carried its questions about gender and race. Silver Action at Tate Modern the same year used the same method of large, carefully prepared gatherings.