RAM Student Curatorial Council (RAMSCC)
Pilot Program
Exhibition: August 9 – September 26, 2012, in RAM Alcove Hall,
Atrium Exhibition Wall, Glass Cases,
and Upstairs Mezzanine Hallway
In conjunction with RAM’s groundbreaking summer exhibition, You Are Breathing In It! Alternative Art Practices, the Riverside Art Museum announces the launch of the Riverside Art Museum’s Student Curatorial Council (RAMSCC) pilot program. RAMSCC has given a group of four locally-based students, ranging from undergraduates to PhD candidates, a firsthand experience working with cutting edge contemporary artists and curators. The students have worked alongside RAM staff and You Are Breathing In It! artists and curator Karla Diaz to plan, execute, and write about their related exhibition programming component, which collectively occupy special featured areas of the museum reserved for this project. Students were given various options to program the RAMSCC exhibition spaces in response and relation to the current exhibition. The range of the four students’ projects includes: curatorial presentation of a selected artist’s work in relation to the exhibition, curatorial presentation of the curator’s own artwork in response to the exhibition, and documentation of / response to a specific exhibition-related workshop that took place.
The students will speak about their work and their process during a panel discussion on September 21. To RSVP please call 951-684-7111 or e-mail Exhibit Liaison Kathryn Poindexter at: ramexhibitions@riversideartmuseum.org.
Participating Curators’ Annotated Biographies:
Michaeline Anderson
Currently completing her Masters degree in Art History, emphasizing in the History of Photography at the University of California, Riverside, Michaeline earned her Bachelors degree in Art History with a minor in Studio Art from California State University of San Bernardino in 2011. In addition to her current internship at RAM, she is currently an intern at the California Museum of Photography and has also held internships at the Robert and Francis Fullerton Art Museum and the Museum of Photographic Arts. She is currently working under the UCR Gluck Fellowship Program and the UCR Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship award.
Lydia Young Ha Kim
Born and raised in South Korea, Lydia has been fortunate to be exposed to multiple cultures thanks to her residencies in Osaka, Japan and Florence, Italy. It was in Europe where she began to seriously pursue the arts and humanities, ignited by various travels and visits to museums. Originally an International Studies major at NYU, Lydia transferred and changed her major to English and Visual Arts during her junior year at California Baptist University in Riverside, CA. Since, she has been immersed in a wide array of cultural studies, including arts, film, and music. She served as an intern for the Mayor's Office at the City of Riverside, which led to an opportunity with Riverside Art Museum. As an intern at RAM, Lydia has helped with various exhibitions and events both at the museum and other galleries, such as The People's Gallery and Cal Baptist University. Currently, Lydia works for Riverside County Office of Education as a tutor for "at-risk" youth. She will begin her graduate studies this fall at Claremont Graduate University, studying Cultural Studies with a concentration in Museum Studies.
Carolyn Schutten
Carolyn Schutten is interested in art in the public sphere, our relationship to public space, as well as collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to curating public spaces. Her projects draw from historic primary sources and critical theory as well as vernacular storytelling. Schutten’s work is concerned with giving voice to marginalized histories as well as interactive and discursive approaches to engaging the public realm.
Schutten is a PhD student emphasizing in museum studies in the public history program at University of California, Riverside. Her research interests include urban and environmental history, photography, and nineteenth and twentieth century American history. She received her master’s degree from the College of Environmental Design at California State University Pomona, specializing in urban design and historic preservation. Schutten has served on the boards of the Inland Empire Section of the American Planning Association and the California Planning Foundation and has received numerous academic awards, including the Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship from UCR and honors from the American Planning Association, the California Planning Foundation and the Women’s Transportation Seminar. She most recently received a research grant from the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment for her work with a small collection of photos of disabled WWI veterans.
As the Outreach and Education Director for Art VULUPS (Art as a Vehicle to Understand Land Use Planning and Sustainability), Schutten has developed collaborative outreach art programming at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, the UCR/California Museum of Photography, the Riverside Community Arts Association, Riverside Ballet Arts, and the College of the Desert. Art VULUPS was honored with two Education Project Awards from the American Planning Association. Schutten is currently working in the photography archives at the UCR/CMP and is conducting outreach and education research on climate change and invasive species at UCR. She has done several Art Alive installations at the Riverside Art Museum, winning the People’s Choice Award in 2008, and has exhibited photographs at the UCR/CMP and the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts. Schutten, a native Californian, also has a background in literature and foreign languages, has travelled extensively and has lived in Mexico and Europe.
Zaid Yousef
Zaid Yousef is a Southern California based visual artist. His formal education is ongoing at the University of California, Riverside where he studies Studio Art and Art History. His primary disciplines are painting, sculpting, and public installation but are not limited to medium or form. His practice revolves around philosophical inquiries about the nature of Art. His artwork is provoked through intellectual vigor and extensive experimentation of form.
Biographies and Statements from Selected Participating Artists:
Theodore DeHart
Theodore Dehart is a graphic designer and photographer from the Inland Empire. He received his Bachelors degree from California State University in Graphic Design and Studio Art with an emphasis in Photography. DeHart has had his work displayed at the Aperture Gallery & Bookstore in New York, Raw Artists in Los Angeles, and Art Works in Riverside. He is also a web and magazine designer for Dot Photozine.
“The Inland Empire occupies an interesting space in Southern California. Almost equal distance from Los Angles and San Diego, the Inland Empire is at once a bustling metropolis and still a rural outpost. In his Cell Tree images, local artist Theodore DeHart documents this interesting landscape from the perspective of a native to the area. He juxtaposes the rural elements of the Inland Empire, particularly trees, with the more urban elements of this area, including power lines and buildings. Furthermore, DeHart manipulates these Polaroid images to continue the distorted view of a complex region. Through these images we can see a unique perspective of a unique place.”
Luz María Sánchez
Mexican-born Luz María Sánchez’s immersive sound environments challenge physical and emotional responses to sonic data through dislocation, duration, and repetition. Minimal in presentation, her projects isolate and amplify politically charged frequencies such as the US/Mexico border soundscape to abstract and re-map cultural space. In her current projects she continues to investigate site and language with an aural meditation on current immigration debates. Sánchez studied both music and literature. With a Ph.D. degree in Art from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Sánchez has focused on the role of sound in art since its inception in the 19th century through its evolution as an independent art practice by the second half of the 20th century.
“In my sound environments I am able to deal with direct relationships between the body and its surrounding space, the alienation of the senses and the idea of sound (specifically) as an immersive and directional medium. These physical and atmospheric spaces are realized as artificial constructions or through interventions within the natural landscape. All of these structures are built to human scale; in order to experience them one must move through or become enclosed within the piece itself.”
www.diaspora2487.org
Luz María Sánchez’s 2487 was originally commissioned by Artspace San Antonio as part of the International Artist-in-Residence program, New Works: 06.2, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan.
