Santa Fe Art Institute
1600 St. Michaels Drive
Santa Fe, NM 87505
“Sanjit Sethi is a dynamic leader whose experience as an artist, arts educator, administrator and collaborator is a unique fit for the Santa Fe Art Institute,” said Richard Martinez, President of the Board of Trustees. “His commitment to innovation with an interdisciplinary focus and diverse global perspective is at the vanguard of creative problem solving in community. He offers us an exciting opportunity to build on our organization’s mission to promote art as a positive social force.”
Mr. Sethi’s own artistic practice has resulted in several collaborative projects including Kuni Wada Bakery Remembrance, a memorial to Japanese families in Memphis, TN who were confined to their homes or put in jail after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor; Urban Defibrillator, a project to encourage discourse on the relationship of the human body to the body of a community; Gypsy Bridge, a proposal for a nomadic bridge on the banks of a city in Europe to commemorate the cultural contributions of the Roma and Gypsy communities; and Richmond Voting Stories, a community-based project examining the often-overlooked yet essential civic activity of voting through a collection of interviews held between local high school students and older members of the Richmond, CA community.
Mr. Sethi holds a Master’s Degree of Science in Advanced Visual Studies from M.I.T., an MFA from University of Georgia, Lamar Dodd School of Art, and a BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. In 2004, he was granted a Fulbright Fellowship, and traveled to India to work on the “Building Nomads Project,” and in 2006 was awarded an Enrichment Travel Fellowship to travel to London, Budapest, and Dublin to work on the Gypsy Bridge Project. His list of panels, publications, and presentations is extensive and includes a diversity of national and international engagements.
Mr. Sethi says of his appointment, “I’m honored to join the Santa Fe Art Institute community. SFAI is incredibly well positioned to address issues around creativity, artistic production, and community engagement. Working with such an innovative institution allows me to continue to partner with organizations, cultural practitioners, and a larger community to address critical issues that exist around us. I am eager to build on the successes of SFAI and cultivate generative conversations, projects, and initiatives that have a local, national and international impact.”
You can learn more about Sanjit Sethi at his website, www.sanjitsethi.com.
About the Santa Fe Art Institute
The Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI) founded in 1985, is an independent non-profit community-based arts center with international reach that presents and promotes art as a positive social force. SFAI fosters the exploration of contemporary art by enlivening public discourse on art, nurturing artists at all phases of their careers, and encouraging learning via the arts for people of all ages through five key program areas: 1) Ongoing residencies that provide support necessary for visual and new media artists, writers and poetry translators, performance artists and composers to complete work and explore new creative directions; 2) An annual season of lectures and workshops that stimulates discourse around important issues in the arts; 3) Small, focused exhibitions that challenge audience assumptions; 4) Publications; and 5) Community-based arts education and outreach that support creativity and innovation, provide an alternative pathway for learning, and expand the traditional skillset available to people young and old.
