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The USC Roski School of Art and Design has announced that Suzanne Lacy, Edgar Arceneaux, Keith Mayerson, Kori Newkirk and Patty Chang have joined its artist faculty ranks and Dr. Andrew Campbell arrives to complement the Critical Studies area beginning in the 2016–17 academic year. This diverse and internationally renowned range of artists, thinkers and teachers complements USC Roski’s roster of outstanding existing faculty, and confirms the school’s commitment to continuing the highest quality of education for its students. The group hire also signals the school’s dedication to playing a key role in the broader Los Angeles, national and global art communities.
The scope and nature of the hire is envisioned as part of an ongoing strategic mission to broaden the school’s offerings, including establishing USC Roski as a center for research in contemporary art and theory, and practice in lens-based and time-based arts, and strengthening its commitment to public art practice, while maintaining excellence in traditional 2D and 3D media.
“Leveraging our enviable position in a major comprehensive university, the only major research university that boasts six independent art schools as well as schools of social work, public policy and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, has been a strategic goal since 2013,” says USC Roski Dean Erica Muhl. “We are steadfast in preparing our students to thrive in a more complex art world.”
These transformative hires will continue the school’s tradition of excellence, while breaking new ground in visual arts pedagogy, practice and research.
Suzanne Lacy is an internationally exhibited visual artist, social activist, educator, writer and feminist whose body of work includes performances, video and photographic installation, critical writing and public art with a focus on social and urban issues.
Lacy not only produces activist and community-driven art, but pioneered feminist art education and social practice programming at premier institutions throughout the state, as dean of fine art and director of the Center for Fine Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts, chair of fine arts and creator of the MFA program in public practice at Otis College of Art and Design.
Edgar Arceneaux, Los Angeles artist and filmmaker, has made an impact in the art world for over a decade. Arceneaux was honored by Performa with the 2015 Malcolm McLaren award for his play Until, Until, Until…
A former United States Artists Fellow, Arceneaux was co-founder and director of the Watts House Project for 13 years and has held teaching positions at CalArts as well as Otis College of Art and Design.
Keith Mayerson has created lush, thought-provoking paintings for two decades, portraying historical and literary figures, pop culture icons, family snapshots and urban landscapes.
His tremendous output, much of which can be seen his 100-piece solo exhibition My American Dream, has been featured in the Whitney Biennial and is currently on display in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland.
Kori Newkirk, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,rose to prominence over 15 years ago with provocative multimedia paintings, sculptural installations, video and photographs. His work engages both the personal and political realities of being and resonates with underlying social implications that speak to issues of self, memory, identity, and place.
Prior to coming to USC, Newkirk held a dual appointment at Otis College of Art and Design and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Patty Chang is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video and installation. Using her own body as a platform for artistic expression, Chang’s art is intensely physical, interacting with objects, posing and performing in ways designed to elicit commentary on gender, language and race.
In 2009 she was named the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow of Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin, and she is a 2014 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work will be featured in the Shanghai Biennial in fall 2016.
Andrew Campbell is an art historian, curator and art critic. His scholarly and curatorial work explores identity-based politics such as sexuality, queerness, race, and feminism, addressing how these movements manifest themselves in visual culture.
This month, Campbell will be presenting at USC Roski School’s graduate lecture series, Roski Talks, which features weekly, in-depth presentations on contemporary art and art criticism. Full list of speakers here.
