The Don B. Huntley Gallery

PLATFORM CSU ConSortiUm Spring 2021 Speakers

January 11, 2021

PLATFORM AN EVENT SERIES OF SOCIALLY ENGAGED ARTISTS, COLLECTIVES, AND CURATORS IN CONVERSATION Presented by ConSortiUm, a collaborative project of California State University art galleries and museums

About the CSU ConSortiUm

The newly formed ConSortiUm, a collaborative project of art museums and galleries from the California State University (CSU) system, is pleased to announce a virtual event series that actively engages students, faculty, staff, and communities through visual arts-based dialogue. The inaugural program, PLATFORM, was launched in September 2020 and includes six live virtual conversations with contemporary artists, collectives, and curators whose work is critical to current re-imaginings of the art world and the world at large.

ConSortiUm recognizes that CSU students are integral to creating a new future, and is therefore committed to providing access to a multiplicity of voices and inspiration as students discover and nurture their own agency.

All events will be presented live via Zoom with access for all CSU campuses. These events are free and also open to the public.

Recordings of most events will be available for post-live-stream viewing and archived by the sponsoring institutions.

Spring 2021 Events

Shaun Leonardo sits for a portrait in the Sky Room at the New Museum in New York

February 11

Thursday at 5:30pm

Artist Shaun Leonardo

 

 

 Hosted by San Jose State,
San Diego State,
and Sacramento State

Event Closed

(left) portrait of Valerie Cassel Oliver, Courtesy Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Photo credit: Travis Fullerton (right) black and white portrait of artist Howardena Pindell, Photo credit: Katherine McMahon

March 11

Thursday at 5:30pm

 Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator of Modern
and Contemporary Art at the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts in conversation
with Artist Howardena Pindell 

 

Hosted by Grand Central Art Center,
CSU Fullerton, Begovich Gallery,
CSU Fullerton, and CSU Dominguez Hills

Event Closed

People’s Kitchen Collective Co-Founders (left to right) Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik carrying a jackfruit, Saqib Keval holding a pot of spices, and Jocelyn Jackson holding an old black and white image; Photo Credit: Molly DeCoudreaux

April 29

Thursday at 5:30pm

Artist Collaborative
People's Kitchen Collective

 

 

Hosted by San Jose State,
San Francisco State, Sonoma State,
and CSU San Bernardino

Primitive Games - performance, 1 hr. at Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, 6/21/18.Photo by Paula Court

Artist Shaun Leonardo

The first event for Spring 2021 will take place Thursday, February 11 at 5:30pm featuring a presentation by artist Shaun Leonardo. Leonardo’s multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice, anchored by his work in Assembly—a diversion program for court-involved youth at the Brooklyn-based, non-profit Recess—is participatory and invested in a process of embodiment. 

Image: Primitive Games - performance, 1 hr. at Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, 6/21/18. Photo credit: Paula Court.

Shaun Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice, and A Blade of Grass, and was recently profiled in the New York Times. His work has been featured at The Guggenheim Museum, the High Line, and New Museum, with a solo exhibition, The Breath of Empty Space, currently at MASS MoCA, then traveling to The Bronx Museum in 2021.

Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator in conversation with Artist Howardena Pindell

The second event, on Thursday, March 11 at 5:30pm will spotlight Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in conversation with artist Howardena Pindell.

 




Image: Howardena Pindell, Night Flight (detail), 2015–2016, mixed media on canvas , 63 x 77".

Howardena Pindell, Night Flight (detail), 2015–2016, Mixed media on canvas , 63 x 77".

Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where she worked from 2000 - 2017. In 2000, she was one of six curators selected to organize the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her 2018 debut exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was a 50-year survey of work by Howardena Pindell entitled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen. The exhibition co-organized with Naomi Beckwith, the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, was named one of the most influential of the decade.

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Howardena Pindell studied painting at Boston University and Yale University. The artist often employs lengthy, metaphorical processes of destruction/reconstruction in her work. She cuts canvases in strips and sews them back together, building up surfaces in elaborate stages. The artist’s fascination with gridded, serialized imagery, along with surface texture appears throughout her oeuvre. Even in her later, more politically charged work, Pindell reverts to these thematic focuses in order to address social issues of homelessness, AIDs, war, genocide, sexism, xenophobia, and apartheid. Pindell is a full professor at State University of New York, Stony Brook. Throughout her career, she has exhibited extensively with notable solo exhibitions at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and The Shed, New York; among many others. Pindell was the subject of the 2018 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago titled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen, which traveled to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2018) and the Rose Art Museum (2019).

People's Kitchen Collective "To the Streets!" 500 person free community meal, West Oakland, California, 2018. Photo Credit: Brooke Anderson

People’s Kitchen Collective

The final event on Thursday, April 29 at 5:30pm will feature People’s Kitchen Collective. People's Kitchen Collective (PKC) works at the intersection of art and activism as a food-centered political education project. Based in Oakland, California, their creative practices reflect the diverse histories and backgrounds of co-founders Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Jocelyn Jackson, and Saqib Keval. PKC creates immersive experiences that honor the shared struggles of our peoples, using family recipes as a map to reveal migrations and stories of resilience. PKC’s social practice-based work is one of radical hospitality.

Image: People's Kitchen Collective To the Streets! 500 person free community meal. West Oakland, California, 2018. Photo Credit: Brooke Anderson.

ConSortiUm’s participating CSU art museums and galleries include venues at campuses in BakersfieldTodd Madigan GalleryChico, Janet Turner Print MuseumDominguez Hills, University Art GalleryEast Bay, University Art Gallery; Fresno, Center for Creativity and the ArtsFullerton, Nicholas & Lee Begovich Gallery and Grand Central Art CenterHumboldt, Reese Bullen Gallery and Goudi'ni Native American Arts GalleryLong BeachSchool of Art and Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art MuseumLos Angeles, Luckman Gallery, Luckman Fine Arts ComplexNorthridgeArt GalleriesPomona, W. Keith & Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery and Don B. Huntley GallerySacramentoUniversity GalleriesSan BernardinoRobert and Frances Fullerton Museum of ArtSan Diego, University Art GalleriesSan FranciscoFine Arts GallerySan Jose, Natalie and James Thompson GallerySonoma, University Art Gallery; and StanislausUniversity Art Gallery and Stan State Art Space.
CSU The California State University Logo

Press Contact: Kelly Lindner
Galleries & Collections Curator
University Galleries, Sacramento State
kelly.lindner@csus.edu

CPP Campus Contact: Michele Cairella Fillmore
Galleries & Collections Curator
University Art Galleries & Collections, Cal Poly Pomona
michelec@cpp.edu

logotypes for all participating CSUs: ConSortiUm’s participating CSU art museums and galleries include venues at campuses in Bakersfield, Todd Madigan Gallery; Chico, Janet Turner Print Museum; Dominguez Hills, University Art Gallery; East Bay, University Art Gallery; Fresno, Center for Creativity and the Arts; Fullerton, Nicholas & Lee Begovich Gallery and Grand Central Art Center; Humboldt, Reese Bullen Gallery and Goudi'ni Native American Arts Gallery; Long Beach, School of Art and Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum; Los Angeles, Luckman Gallery, Luckman Fine Arts Complex; Northridge, Art Galleries; Pomona, W. Keith & Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery and Don B. Huntley Gallery; Sacramento, University Galleries; San Bernardino, Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art; San Diego, University Art Galleries; San Francisco, Fine Arts Gallery; San Jose, Natalie and James Thompson Gallery; Sonoma, University Art Gallery; Stanislaus, University Art Gallery and Stan State Art Space