CAA Conversations

The Museum Worker is a subseries of CAA Conversations about pathways to careers in museums, featuring candid conversations with professionals in the field. Museum workers share how they got where they are today, what they do, and the role of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in day-to-day work, as well as hopes for the future of the field. In this episode, Cynthia Cao, Matt Isble, and Leticia Pardo discuss the challenges facing those working in museum exhibition design and installation as well as their dedication to making museums more accessible.

Cynthia Cao is an artist and freelance art installer in San Jose, California.

Matt Isble is an exhibition Designer and Chief Preparator at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California as well as the founder of museumtrade.org.

Leticia Pardo is the Creative Director of Exhibition Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Samantha Hull is a member of the CAA Museum Committee and the Museum Engagement and Operations Coordinator at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University in California.

In this conversation, Alison McNulty talks with Katerie Gladdys about the vast interdisciplinary territory she navigates in her work and pedagogy to “encourage others to look more closely at what constitutes . . . everyday existence.” Gladdys’s courses in studio art and technology view creative practice from the intersection of social and ecological inquiry, open spaces, and opportunities for her students to practice art that is based in diverse modes of research and nontraditional sites, and make creative use of resources and unexpected partnerships. McNulty and Gladdys also discuss the inspirations and questions guiding Gladdy’s research and pedagogy, the strategies she uses to craft and implement her courses safely, with reciprocity and flexibility to serve all students, and where she finds the support and resources to work with her students in these challenging modalities.

Katerie Gladdys is a transdisciplinary artist who thinks about place, marginalized landscapes, sustainability, mapping, consumption, food, agriculture, and disability. She creates installations, interactive, sculpture, video, and relational performances. Her creative work has been exhibited in national and international juried venues, including in the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, and Croatia. She is an associate professor in Art and Technology in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Florida. Gladdys received her MFA in New Media from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BA in Art and Design from the University of Chicago. 

 

Alison McNulty is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator based in the Hudson Valley, NY. She grounds artmaking in embodied poetics through explorations of ordinary material histories, precarious places, and ecological entanglements. Her work has been presented at museums, galleries, conferences, and unconventional spaces throughout the US, Europe, and Columbia. McNulty was recently awarded an Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist Commission, a Saltonstall Foundation Residency Fellowship, the Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award from Washington University in St. Louis, and the Empowered Artist Award from Arts Mid-Hudson. McNulty is an assistant professor at Parsons School of Design and the director of Ann Street Gallery, a nonprofit contemporary art space in Newburgh, NY. She earned a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA at the University of Florida.

In this conversation, Alison McNulty and Steve Rossi touch on topics of site responsiveness, site-specificity, performance, and environmental ethics, as they relate to foundations and studio art pedagogy, as well as connections with these topics in each of their creative practices.

Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. 

Alison McNulty is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator based in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is a Part-Time Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design at the New School where she’s taught in the First Year Program since 2015, and is currently the Director of Ann Street Gallery, a contemporary art space in Newburgh, NY, a program of Safe Harbors of the Hudson, a nonprofit organization that combines supportive housing and arts. Her practice as an artist explores the layered histories and poetics of ordinary reclaimed materials, precarity in sites, species, and ecological entanglements. Her work has been presented at museums, galleries, conferences, and unconventional spaces throughout the US, Europe, and Columbia. In 2023 McNulty was awarded an Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist Commission and a Saltonstall Foundation Residency Fellowship. She received the 2022 Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award and an Empowered Artist Award from Arts Mid-Hudson in support of her work with the Artist in Vacancy initiative of the Newburgh Community Landbank.

In this conversation Steve Rossi, Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University, and Lyn Godley, Full Professor of Industrial Design at Thomas Jefferson University discuss their work developing studio art and design pedagogy informed by a healthcare context.

Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Lyn Godley is a Full Professor of Industrial Design at Thomas Jefferson University, where she has developed a cross-disciplinary curricula in Lighting Design with a focus on light as experience. She is also the Director of the Jefferson Center of Immersive Arts for Health, an initiative to investigate the impact of dynamic light and interactive art on health. She has spoken at national and international conferences on these topics along with lighting design education. In addition to her academic work, she also is a multi-media artist. Her designs, done individually and as a partner of Godley-Schwan have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous international museums and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 2000, her studio work has focused on merging light and art and the relationship between art, technology, and its impact on the viewer. Her studio practice is linked to her research through integrating dynamic light in artwork that can create a deeper engagement by affecting both the environment and, ultimately, the user.

The Museum Worker is a subseries of CAA Conversations about pathways to careers in museums, featuring candid conversations with professionals in the field. Museum workers share how they got where they are today, what they do, and the role of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in day-to-day work, as well as hopes for the future of the field. In this episode, Lisa Abia-Smith, Erica Hubbard, and Nenette Luarca-Shoaf discuss challenges facing those working in museum education, engagement, and outreach, as well as their dedication to making museums more accessible.

Lisa Abia-Smith is the Director of Education at the University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Senior Instructor in the College of Design (School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management).

Erica Hubbard is the Director of Chicago Programs at the Obama Foundation in Chicago.

Nenette Luarca-Shoaf is the Managing Director for Learning and Engagement at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.

Erica Warren is a member of CAA’s Museum Committee, former curator and currently assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

In this roundtable dialogue, three art historians discuss pedagogical approaches in socially engaged art practices as they apply to the teaching of art history, paying critical attention to the ways these strategies intervene on and challenge neoliberal educational norms. How have contemporary artists working in various social and political contexts transformed public and alternative spaces into discursive platforms through which knowledge can be generated, shared, or amplified collectively? And what can we learn about teaching art and art history in the North American system by studying these artists’ approaches? This conversation emerged from a panel at CAA 111th Annual Conference, “Generative Pedagogies in Art and Curatorial Practice.” The project will culminate with the publication of Pedagogical Art in Activist and Curatorial Practices, edited by Noni Brynjolson and Izabel Galliera, forthcoming from Routledge in early 2025.

Noni Brynjolson is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Indianapolis, where she has taught since 2020 after receiving her PhD in Art History from the University of California San Diego. Her research focuses on collaborative public art projects and examines themes of repair and construction in contemporary art.

Izabel Galliera is an Associate Professor of Art History at Susquehanna University, where she is also an Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and co-coordinator of the minor in museum studies. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is at the intersection of contemporary art, activism, and social justice.

Jessica Santone is an Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at Cal State East Bay, where she has taught since 2015. She received her PhD from McGill University. Her research concerns pedagogical art and social practice, particularly projects that expand knowledge around climate and science.

Starting from a shared need to decolonize their curricula, ceramic educators Anne Drew Potter, Brendan Tang and Tasha Lewis discuss essential changes to the classroom which can help mitigate systemic concerns. They describe how acknowledging personal and historical bias can help jumpstart an ongoing conversation with students, centering student contributions to the class discourse and increasing student investment. Lewis also shares her experience employing rubric-based self-assessment in order to further these aims.

Anne Drew Potter has coalesced a fascination with, adoration of, and abhorrence for the human condition into a unique sculptural language. Raised in Berkeley, California, potter has lived throughout the US and in Mexico, Germany, and Canada. She earned MFA degrees from the New York Academy of Art and Indiana University.

Brendan Lee Satish Tang is a visual artist who is widely known for his ceramic work. He earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, both nationally and internationally.

Tasha Lewis is a sculptor of many materials. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her academic study has consistently woven literature, theory and art history with her materially expansive visual art practice.

Starting from a shared need to decolonize their curricula, ceramic educators Anne Drew Potter, Brendan Tang and Tasha Lewis discuss essential changes to the classroom which can help mitigate systemic concerns. They describe how acknowledging personal and historical bias can help jumpstart an ongoing conversation with students, centering student contributions to the class discourse and increasing student investment. Lewis also shares her experience employing rubric-based self-assessment in order to further these aims.

Anne Drew Potter has coalesced a fascination with, adoration of, and abhorrence for the human condition into a unique sculptural language. Raised in Berkeley, California, potter has lived throughout the US and in Mexico, Germany, and Canada. She earned MFA degrees from the New York Academy of Art and Indiana University.

Brendan Lee Satish Tang is a visual artist who is widely known for his ceramic work. He earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, both nationally and internationally.

Tasha Lewis is a sculptor of many materials. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her academic study has consistently woven literature, theory and art history with her materially expansive visual art practice.

Susan Altman, Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College, Erika Mahr an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College, and Steve Rossi an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University discuss their shared experiences related to the many benefits and challenges of teaching studio art to non-majors.

Susan Altman is a Professor and Assistant Chairperson in the Visual, Performing and Media Arts Department at Middlesex College where she teaches courses in drawing, painting and printmaking to both majors and non-majors. In addition to her studio teaching, she is the Director of The Center for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching and where her research interest is in the pedagogy of teaching studio art, as well as improving teaching across the disciplines. As a practicing artist, her work is focused on drawing and printmaking. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including a NYFA Artist Fellowship. She lives and works in New York City.

Erika Mahr is an artist and educator based in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Westchester Community College and is currently serving as the Department Chair for the Art + Design and Performing Arts Department. Her studio practice explores drawing with an expanded sensibility and is invested in the act of mediation, reducing, and repeating to locate where the ephemeral and concrete intersect, become blurred, and create tension. She earned a BFA from the University of Florida and MFA from Hunter College and is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Drawing.

Born into a family of makers, Steve Rossi developed an intense appreciation and respect for artistic craft and physical labor through growing up around family members making quilts, knitting blankets, repairing houses, and arranging flowers. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work has been exhibited at the Maguire Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, the Wassaic Project, and the public art festival Art in Odd Places among many others. He has participated in artist residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship at Gallery Aferro. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

In this conversation, Steve Rossi, Assistant Professor and Sculpture Program Head at St. Joseph's University, speaks with Lauren Whearty a co-director of Ortega y Gasset Projects and Emma Wilcox a co-director of Gallery Aferro. As non-profit gallery co-directors and artists with dedicated creative practices themselves, they each have a unique vantage point on the topic of studio art professional practices curriculum. In the first half of the conversation the history and founding of each art space is discussed, along with Emma and Lauren’s organizational roles, followed by a discussion of the nuts and bolts of general professional practices skill sets, a discussion of how failure can be framed as a creative act, as well as various employment opportunities explored along with advice offered to students preparing to enter the visual arts field.