The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is located at Circle of Palms Plaza, beside Plaza de César Chávez. A member of North American Reciprocal Museums, SJMA has received several awards from the American Alliance of Museums.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is an art museum located in downtown Santa Barbara, California.
Nina Carolyn Paley is an American cartoonist, animator, and free culture activist. She was the artist and often the writer of the comic strips Nina's Adventures and Fluff, after which she worked primarily in animation. She is perhaps best known for creating the 2008 animated feature film Sita Sings the Blues, based on the Ramayana, with parallels to her personal life. In 2018, she completed her second animated feature, Seder-Masochism, a retelling of the Book of Exodus as patriarchy emerging from goddess worship.
Teresita Fernández is a New York-based visual artist best known for her public sculptures and unconventional use of materials. Her work is characterized by an interest in perception and the psychology of looking. Her experiential, large-scale works are often inspired by landscape and natural phenomena as well as diverse historical and cultural references. Her sculptures present spectacular optical illusions and evoke natural phenomena, land formations, and water in its infinite forms.
Amelia Alcock-White is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver.
Carolyn Mary Kleefeld is an English-American author, poet, and visual artist. She is the author of twenty-five books, has a line of fine art cards, and has had numerous gallery and museum awards and exhibitions between 1981 and the present, in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major cities.
Exhibit design is the process of developing an exhibit—from a concept through to a physical, three-dimensional exhibition. It is a continually evolving field, drawing on innovative, creative, and practical solutions to the challenge of developing communicative environments that 'tell a story' in a three-dimensional space.
Melissa Chiu is an Australian museum director, curator and author, and the director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) is a nonprofit educational institution and museum founded in 1996 and located in Santa Cruz, California, at the downtown McPherson Center. Its mission is to ignite shared experiences and unexpected connections, using art and history to build a stronger, more connected community.
Naomi Beckwith is the deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She joined the museum in June 2021. Previously she had been the senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beckwith joined the curatorial staff there in May 2011.
Shared historical authority is a current trend in museums and historical institutions which aims to open the interpretation of history to the public.
Katerina Lanfranco is a New York City-based visual artist making paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mixed media installations. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario. She studied art at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she received her B.A in Visual Art and in "Visual Theory and Museum Studies". She also attended the Sierra Institute studying Nature Philosophies and Religions while camping in the California wilderness. She received her M.F.A from Hunter College, City University of New York in Studio Art, with an emphasis in painting. In 2004, she studied at the Universitat der Kunst (UdK) in Berlin, Germany on an exchange scholarship. During this time, she also received a travel grant to study Baroque and High Baroque painting in Italy.
Amada Cruz is the director and CEO of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. She was director of the Seattle Art Museum until October 2023 and was The Sybil Harrington Director & Chief Executive Officer of Phoenix Art Museum from February 2015 through mid 2019. Cruz has been embroiled in several controversies over the course of her career, including alleged discrimination of unhoused individuals at the Seattle Art Museum, allegedly creating a hostile work environment at the Phoenix Art Museum, and terminating the employment of an Asian American museum curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
The TEDxSantaCruz is an independent TEDx event founded in 2011 by David Warren, a retired Cabrillo College Professor. This initiative is independently organized by a group of entrepreneurs, artists, philanthropists, and educators called the TEDxSanta Cruz Leadership Team. The curator and organizers of these past events have been led by Jon Luini, Nada Miljkovic, Kirsti Scott and Irene Tsouprake according to TED Other team members have been Doug Abrams, Andrew Broadbent, Mary Anderson, Vania Benavides, Elizabeth Gummere, Gary Maricich, Cheri O'Neil, Sheila Schat, Mariah Tanner and Dag Weiser.
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is an art historian, curator, and professor of American art at the University of Pennsylvania. She has curated major exhibitions and published several books on African American art. In 2019, she became director of history, research and scholarship and senior historian at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Charlotte Nalle Eyerman is an American museum director and curator and expert in 19th century French art. She was appointed Director and Chief Curator of the JPMorgan Chase art collection in 2017. She is a member of the board of trustees at Accountability Lab. Eyerman has also served as Director and chief executive officer of the Monterey Museum of Art (2010–2013), and as Director of the Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills.
A community museum is a museum serving as an exhibition and gathering space for specific identity groups or geographic areas.
Candice Hopkins is a Carcross/Tagish First Nation independent curator, writer, and researcher who predominantly explores areas of indigenous history, and art.
Rita Gonzalez is an American curator, author and media artist. She is the head of the contemporary art department at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), an institution she has worked at since 2004. Many of her curatorial projects involve under-recognized Latinx and Latin American artists.
Lizania Cruz is a Dominican visual artist, designer and participatory artist based in New York. Cruz's art examines how human migration "affects ways of being and belonging". Her multimedia installations and projects frequently employ audience participation, drawing on archives as well as the testimonies and oral histories of her subjects. Her projects have incorporated floral arrangements designed by undocumented workers in response to the immigration policy of Donald Trump, testimonials from people about how the American Dream died for them, and investigations into the internalization of the historical narratives of racism in the Dominican Republic.
