• To validate, celebrate, and critically examine the misfit (n) as an entity — and misfit (v) as a strategy — at a time when compliance and standardization are ever-more forcefully imposed; and when difference is commonly feared, pathologized, and eradicated by decree
• To appreciate how knowledge institutions* — organizations dependent upon ordering infrastructures — have grappled with noncompliant things, people, and ideas; and to imagine how they could more constructively, boldly, and creatively do so
• To highlight the wealth and variety of knowledge institutions in our metropolitan region — and to demonstrate how New York City can serve as a national and global beacon, an embodiment of the vital importance of trusted public knowledge, of robust investment in cultural institutions, and of mutual aid, solidarity, and coalition-building
• To juxtapose (or cross-reference!) institutions, collections, and ideas — and explore their prismatic refractions
• To discover what new knowledges and creative practices might emerge through integrative thinking and interdisciplinary, inter-institutional collaboration
• To seek commonalities and complementarities — from the individual to the institutional scale — and to build foundations for future partnerships
• To experiment with more humane, creative, principled, and generative models of “making knowledge public” – from idea-germination, through peer review, through the fabrication and distribution of a material artifact or experience

*How are we defining knowledge institutions? Capaciously, in true cross-referenced fashion! Let’s think about what the entire GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), the education sector, and other civic institutions — the post office! public housing! — could do together.