Curatorial Fellowship Program

2012 Curatorial Fellow/Academic Specialist

The UCSD University Art Gallery (UAG) is pleased to invite applications for the 2012 Curatorial Fellowship Program. The University Art Gallery is committed to academic excellence and diversity within the faculty, staff, and student body. This unique program provides a paid fellowship for curators in the early stages of their careers (beginning Fall 2012). During this period the fellow will work with the UAG Director and Exhibition Manager to produce a series of exhibitions and programs for the University Art Gallery. The Fellowship program seeks to increase the diversity of the curatorial profession and more generally enhance the dialogue around diversity within contemporary curatorial practice. The Curatorial Fellow will participate in the intellectual and creative life of the UCSD Visual Arts department, one of the leading centers for research in contemporary art practice, history and theory in the United States.

The Visual Arts department houses a renowned MFA program along with a vibrant Ph.D. program in Art History, Theory and Criticism with particular strengths in the study of modern and contemporary art. It is one of the only departments in the country to combine advanced graduate research in both art history and art practice in a single scholarly community. Fellows are also encouraged to establish relationships with students and faculty in Ethnic Studies, Critical Gender Studies, the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, the Cross-Cultural Center, and other campus units, as well as with the broader San Diego and Tijuana community. Applicants should have a strong interest in new or experimental approaches to curatorial practice, both within and beyond the gallery space. Successful candidates will demonstrate strong or potential accomplishments in areas contributing to diversity, equity and inclusion, and a desire to play a leadership role in advancing UC, San Diego’s commitment to achieving excellence and diversity.


Please apply online for the following open position:
University Art Gallery Curatorial Fellow/Academic Specialist (10-345)

Application Materials
• CV
• Three letters of recommendation
• One sample of published writing
• A three-to-five page (1000-1500 word) statement of purpose outlining the applicant’s past curatorial experience and future visions, as they relate to the UAG fellowship
• Documentation of past exhibitions and research (catalogs, reviews, etc.)
• A personal statement summarizing past or potential contributions to diversity

Application Deadline: Monday, January 23, 2012

For further information please contact:
Grant Kester, Director, University Art Gallery: gkester@ucsd.edu
Merete Kjaer, Exhibitions Manager, University Art Gallery: mkkjaer@ucsd.edu

 

 

About the Visual Arts Department
The UCSD Visual Arts Department is the only art department in the UC system (and one of the few nationally) that combines both an MFA and a Ph.D. program in a single scholarly community. Founded in the late 1960s, the department has long been recognized as a center for experimental art practice. Early faculty members included figures such as Allan Kaprow, Paul Brach, David and Eleanor Antin, Jerry Rothenberg, Harold Cohen, and Helen and Newton Harrison. This experimental tradition has continued into the present, as evidenced by the work of current faculty such as Ruben Ortiz-Torres, Jennifer Pastor, Anya Gallacio, Lev Manovich, Amy Adler, Ricardo Dominguez, Jordan Crandall and many others. The department also has a long history as a center for experimentation with art practices in public space, extending from the work of Louis Hock and Fred Lonidier to more recent faculty working in the area of “Public Culture,” such as Teddy Cruz, Kyong Park and the new Center for Urban Ecologies. The Art History program includes a number of leading scholars working across a range of periods, with particular strengths in the area of modern and contemporary art, including Norman Bryson, John Welchman, Kuiyi Shen, Lesley Stern, Sheldon Nodelman, Mariana Botey and Elizabeth Newsome. The UCSD Geisel Library houses the archives of InSite, an innovative arts organization which presented a series of internationally acclaimed exhibitions between 1992 and 2005 featuring commissioned projects focused on the San Diego/Tijuana corridor (many of which included UCSD faculty or graduates). InSite is widely seen as a model for adventurous, experimental curating and the archive provides an invaluable resource for both scholarly and practical research. UCSD is also home to the Stuart Collection, a long-term initiative to commission major new works of public art for the university campus. Featured artists have included Niki de Saint Phalle, Robert Irwin, Michael Asher, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, John Baldessari, Tim Hawkinson and Barbara Kruger, among many others.

About the University Art Gallery
Founded in 1966, the University Art Gallery at UCSD has a long-standing commitment to new forms of artistic practice. The UAG’s inaugural exhibition was “Art of Latin America Since Independence,” which featured over four hundred paintings, prints and drawings from sixteen different countries. The following year saw an extensive survey of contemporary Chilean Art. This dialogue continued with the “Arte Picante” juried exhibition of Chicano art, “Chile from Within,” and an important early exhibition of photographs by Tina Modotti curated by Patricia Albers. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s curators such as David Antin, Moria Roth, Donald Lewallen and Gerry McAllister presented some of the first west coast exhibitions featuring performance, installation-based work, and sound art. In 1968 alone the UAG presented work by influential Conceptualists such as Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Paul Brach and Miriam Shapiro (the last three were also faculty members), along with Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Philip Pearlstein. Fluxus: the Big Book, in 1969 was one of the first Fluxus exhibitions in California and included a Fluxus parade directed by John Baldessari and Robert Watts. Throughout the 1970s the UAG continued to feature innovative new work by younger artists or groups which were soon to achieve fame (Richard Serra in 1970, Nancy Spero and Mabou Mines in 1971, Simone Forti’s performance work in 1972, Ed Ruscha’s artist’s books in 1973, Mary Beth Edelson in 1977, Juan Downey, Betye Saar, and Douglas Huebler in 1979.

The 1980s saw exhibits by Niki de Saint Phalle, a major survey of women’s performance art (featuring Laurie Anderson, Jacki Apple, Lynn Hershman, Pauline Oliveros, Yvonne Rainer, Martha Rosler, and Adrian Piper), early works by Los Angeles-based artists Michael Kelley and Jeffrey Vallance, along with shows featuring Terry Allen and Komar and Melamid. During the 1990s and early 2000s, under gallery director Kathleen Stoughton, the UAG presented video installations by Norman and Bruce Yonemoto (1990), public works by Alexis Smith, the first sculptural installation created by painter Leon Golub (1992), along with exhibitions by activist artist Conrad Atkinson, painters such as Philip Taaffe, Lari Pittman, and Ross Bleckner, and John Ahearn’s body cast sculptures from the South Bronx. Exhibitions over the past decade have included “Living in Context,” which explored collaborative approaches to urban housing projects in San Diego, a solo exhibition by Luis Gispert, a retrospective of works by the Cuban photographer Mario Algaze, the first solo exhibition of the young African-American artist lauren woods, a solo show dedicated to Ken Gonzales-Day’s work exploring the history of lynching in the American Southwest, and one of the first exhibitions in the United States to present the work of contemporary art collectives working in Argentina.

Gallery Director
Grant Kester is Chair of the Visual Arts department and Professor of Art History in the Visual Arts department. Kester is one of the leading figures in the emerging critical dialogue around “relational” or “dialogical” art practices. His publications include Art, Activism and Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage (1998), Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (2004), and The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (2011). He is currently completing an anthology of writings by art collectives working in Latin America, in collaboration with Bill Kelley. Between 1990 and 1996 he was editor of Afterimage, an arts journal published by the Visual Studies Workshop, where he established one of the first paid editorial internship in the country for minority arts writers and critics.

Exhibitions Manager
Merete Kjaer was born and raised in Denmark and moved to California in the early 1990s. She received her BA in Art History/Criticism from UC San Diego, focusing on modern and contemporary art practices and theory. Merete has worked widely within the arts community, initially as the Exhibitions Coordinator for the Children's Museum and subsequently as Projects Coordinator, Associate Curator and Archive Director for inSite. Additionally, Merete has worked independently with numerous individual artists and organizations realizing specific projects and arts programs.