Astria Suparaks position at Carnegie Mellon is being redefined - ie eliminated. Her exit letter is a model of grace, her leadership in the field is exemplary and far-reaching. Carnegie Mellons lack of insight and understanding of her role and contributions impacts people far beyond the students and local community. Their loss will be a gain for all of us as her next work will undoubtedly be as spectacular as her accomplishments to date. Astrias letter here: Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Supporters, My position of Director and Curator at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University has been eliminated. The Dean of the CMU College of Fine Arts has elected to transform the gallery into an internally focused space for students and faculty that will be programmed by a faculty committee, effectively bringing my tenure to a close. It has been an honor to build a critical and dynamic program for the university’s contemporary art gallery over the last six years. During this time we staged 26 exhibitions and 98 public events (including lectures, workshops, panels, film screenings, book launches, discussions, vaccine clinics, taste testings, and more), produced two major publications, and hosted residencies for artists, writers, designers, and an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship. Upon my arrival, I oversaw a redesign of the gallery’s visual identity, including a new logo, website and online archives, and launched new initiatives like the Gallery Store. I also sought to create a coherent, socially-engaged program of exhibition, one which would establish the Miller Gallery as distinct among the other outstanding arts organizations in Pittsburgh. Drawing on our position as a gallery within a research university, we strived to present thought-provoking, interdisciplinary exhibitions and programming that expand the notions of art and culture, creating an open, pedagogical space where students, faculty, and the wider public could interact, share experiences, converse, and learn. In seeking to bridge communities, my programming covered such topics as culture jamming, urban planning, science & technology, economics & labor, experimental geography, immigration, health & design, sustainability, feminisms, and sports fan culture. During my time here, the Miller Gallery has collaborated with 60 organizations large and small, local and international, to manifest this work, including the largest survey of contemporary artists connected to the region, the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial. Our four touring exhibitions, meanwhile, brought our research into broader dialogues and reached expanded audiences, traveling to twelve cities and two countries since 2008, putting the gallery on the national map. And our programming brought a range of visitors through the door in record numbers - not only from CMU schools and departments that had never before visited the gallery, but also from neighboring states and distant cities. This month alone we are hosting visitors and classes from Montreal, New York, Chicago, Ohio, Toronto, Portland, and San Francisco. I appreciate the recognition that our work has received both in Pittsburgh and abroad, with front page stories in local papers, coverage on the evening news, and profiles and enthusiastic reviews in The New York Times, Artforum, The Huffington Post, Rhizome, Fast Company, Architecture Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Art in America, Design Observer, and Hyperallergic, among other publications. This work also led to my nomination by a panel of distinguished curators for the Independent Curators International’s Independent Vision Curatorial Award. I’m proud of these accomplishments, and have the deepest gratitude to everyone I had the privilege to work with: inspiring artists and cultural producers; brilliant curators and collaborators; and all of our benevolent funders and sponsors. To all of our visitors and participants, thank you for your patronage. I also want to thank my immensely talented and dedicated co-workers Margaret Cox, Graphic Designer and Office Coordinator, and Tesar Freeman, Exhibitions Coordinator and Facilities Manager, and the fantastic interns, student assistants, and exhibitions crew that make up the the gallery team. Your work has been essential to our success. The last six years have been an incredibly rewarding experience. I will be taking time to explore possibilities for my next venture, and plan to pursue my own curatorial and creative work while continuing to oversee the Alien She exhibition and tour. Alien She, which I co-curated with Ceci Moss, will remain on view at the Miller Gallery through Feb. 16 before embarking on a nationwide tour including Vox Populi in Philadelphia (opening March 7), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco this fall, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Feldman Gallery & Project Space in Portland, Oregon in 2015. Another traveling exhibition which we produced, Intimate Science - exhibition opening, curated by Andrea Grover, will open on Feb. 6 at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School in New York. I hope to see some of you soon, perhaps at one of these openings. I am forever grateful for your support, attendance, participation, feedback and dialogue, and for the communities that we built together, across disciplines, interests, and backgrounds. I look forward to staying in touch. Astria Suparak astriasuparak bit.ly/AlienShe
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 20:09:46 +0000