“Agency means the confidence to be active in the world, and not simply a passive recipient of the world as it appears to one.”
IMAGINE, CONSULT, LISTEN, QUESTION, ADVISE, RESEARCH, PLOT, CREATE,
IMAGINE, CONSULT, LISTEN, QUESTION, ADVISE, RESEARCH, PLOT, CREATE,
future agency LLC
Future Agency LLC is a boutique consulting agency for Humanities talent and their ideas to change the world. I bring a global network of collaborative creatives to a guest seat at the table with people who want to build culture.
My 20+ years of expertise includes art experiences, contracts and negotiations, cultural organizing, curating, writing, media, public programs, public speaking, publishing, teaching, and scholarship, as well as extensive knowledge of major public institutions, museums, philanthropic ventures, international art fairs, collections, acquisitions, gifts, and legacy visioning. I have consulted on many opportunities, including grants, residencies, and awards, as well as exhibitions, programs, public art, books, and stewardship.
In Washington DC I also provide individualized, multidisciplinary research and other professional services, including the representative presence of new thought leaders and leading businesses in the United States capital, seat of the federal government, home to 174 embassies, headquarters of numerous international policy-making bodies and think tanks, and many significant museums, monuments, and cultural institutions.
Open to new clients. Priority scheduling for formerly incarcerated talent, forever.
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Intersectional Futurism: Privilege, Responsibility, Representation, Accountability, and Inclusion
Participants are guided through a series of humanities-based exercises to consider personal agency, to better understand areas of strength and potential impact.
I began teaching these concepts in the spring of 2016 while I was Scholar in Residence at California College of the Arts’ Center for Art + Public Life and Visiting Scholar at San Francisco State University’s Department of Art, and later also at University of California, Berkeley; New York University’s Washington DC Global Academic Center, and The George Washington University.
This workshop has been created specifically for executives, directors, managers, leads, and other decision-makers committed to inclusion, expanded audiences, and better business.
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This lecture surveys artists’ rejection letters and draws on my professional experiences in galleries, museums, and the art market at large, as well as select legends and lore of the field, including excellent gossip, usually offered as the last lecture of my seminars.
I began presenting this talk for my students in The Artist in the World at California Institute of Integral Studies, where I taught artists to actively court rejection. I continued to build my “rejection references,” across disciplines at California College of the Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, and UC Berkeley.
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Top, center artwork: Travis Somerville’s Untitled (Found Globe) and additional artwork and ephemera, gifts to the Equal Justice Initiative, 2025; Self-portrait with Susan O’Malley etched mirror and additional gifts to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2020. Photo: Katherine Du Tiel
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Future Agency LLC is a limited liability corporation licensed in the State of Maryland, created in memory of artist Bashar “Pop Smoke” Jackson (1999 – 2020). In addition to a nod to William Kentridge’s explanation of agency, Future Agency honors my late father David B. Frock’s longtime San Francisco Bay Area technology employment agency, Pacific Systems Search Agency Inc., which made my life possible and continues to inform everything I know about business and agency, among other Pacific systems.