Elizabeth Armstrong
Elizabeth Armstrong is an independent curator based in Palm Springs, California. From 2014 to 2018 she was Director of the Palm Springs Art Museum (PSAM); from 2009 to 2014 she was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Mia) where she started the Center for Alternative Museum Practice (CAMP). Prior to her Mia post, she served as Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport, California (2000−2008). She was also a Curator at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art (1996−2000) and the Walker Art Center (1983−1996). Armstrong is committed to innovative artists and experimental museum practices. With a long track record of acclaimed exhibitions and books, and has received awards from the American Association of Museum Curators (AAMC) for, among others, Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury; and from the International Association of Art Critics for In The Spirit of Fluxus. She was in the first group of U.S. curators selected to participate in the Center for Curatorial Leadership in 2007. Armstrong earned her M.A. in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a B.A. in Cultural Studies from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Connie Butler
Connie Butler is the Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles where, since 2013, she has organized numerous exhibitions including the biennial of Los Angeles artists Made in LA (2014), Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth (2015), Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space (2017) and Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence (2019). She also co-curated Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions (2018), organized with The Museum of Modern Art and travelled to the Hammer Museum in 2018, and Witch Hunt, a collaboration with ICA LA which closed in January 2022. From 2006 – 2013 she was the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York where she co-curated Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948 – 1988 (2014), the artist’s first retrospective in the United States and On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century (2010) and Greater New York (2010). Butler also organized the groundbreaking survey WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles where she was curator from 1996 – 2006. She was the 2020 recipient of the Bard College Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence.
Gianna Drake-Kerrison
Gianna Drake-Kerrison is a highly accomplished Wealth Advisor, collaborating with her husband Dee Kerrison at UBS Financial Services, Inc. With over 25 years of invaluable experience in the financial services sector, Gianna has established herself as a trusted advisor in wealth management. She also serves as a member of the Multicultural Investor Financial Advisory Board at UBS, contributing her insights to foster diversity and inclusion within the organization. Passionate about the arts, Gianna and Dee have been dedicated contemporary art collectors for over two decades, enriching their lives with a deep appreciation for creativity and expression. Gianna’s commitment to empowering women and supporting her community is evident through her past leadership roles, including her tenure as the former Board Chair of Girls Inc of Orange County and her involvement as an Advisory Committee member for the Girls Inc National Board. She has also contributed her expertise as a former Board Member of New Directions For Women. Currently, Gianna is actively involved with The Hammer Museum, where she continues to champion the arts and cultural enrichment.
Ken Gonzales Day
Ken Gonzales-Day’s interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems from lynching photography to museum displays. Gonzales-Day’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Getty, LACMA, MOCA, MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian’s Nation Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, among others. His writing has appeared in various publications and journals and his monographs include Lynching in the West: 1850 – 1935 (Duke) and Profiled (LACMA, 2011). Gonzales-Day received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2017, and has received fellowships and awards from Art Matters, COLA, California Community Foundation, Creative Capital, Smithsonian (SARF), The Rockefeller Foundation, and holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in Art at Scripps College. He has served on the Boards of the College Art Association (CAA), Journal of The Archives of American Art, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).
Lisa Mark
Lisa Gabrielle Mark is the Chief of Public Engagement, Learning, and Impact at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, where she is responsible for shaping the museum’s public-facing programs and initiatives, as well as publications, research, and archival projects. Mark served as Director of Publications at MOCA from 2000 to 2010, editing groundbreaking scholarly catalogues such as WACK: Art and the Feminist Revolution and A Minimal Future: Art as Object, 1958 – 1968, and from 2012 to 2023 served the Senior Director of Publishing and Content Strategy for Exhibitions and Collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In addition to writing essays for numerous exhibition catalogues, including Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952 – 1982 (LACMA) and Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave (MOCA), Mark has also worked as an independent editor and publishing consultant for various private and institutional clients. She edited the comprehensive catalogue that accompanied Mike Kelley’s 2013 retrospective, organized by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, as well as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy: Collaborative Works published by The Power Plant, Toronto, in 2000.
Claire Peeps
Claire Peeps serves as Executive Director of the Durfee Foundation. In her earlier professional career, Peeps was President of Grantmakers in the Arts, Chair of Southern California Grantmakers, and Vice Chair of the California Council for the Humanities. She is a former President of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, appointed by Supervisor Sheila Kuehl to represent the Third District, and a current Commissioner on LA County’s Quality & Productivity Commission. She is a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Policy, and an adjunct instructor at the USC Price School of Public Policy. Peeps is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of New Mexico, and holds certificates from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
Ed Rada
Edward Rada has held leadership positions at The Music Center in Downtown Los Angeles, including Chief Financial Officer, Managing Director of Center Theatre Group, and producer at both the Ahmanson Theatre and Mark Taper Forum. He is a former President of The Music Center Foundation and past chairman of Project Angel Food. He also serves on the Boards of Directors for USA for Africa/We Are The World; Boston Court Pasadena; and Friends of Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan. Additionally, he has worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Entertainment Industry Foundation in Century City, Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and Hands Across America. He received an A.B. in Economics from Occidental College and completed The Executive Program in Management at UCLA’s John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management.
Cauleen Smith
Artist Cauleen Smith was raised in Sacramento, California and lives in Los Angeles. Smith holds a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith’s short films, feature film, an installation and performance were work showcased at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019. Smith has had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, MassMoCA and LACMA. Smith is the recipient of the following awards: Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital Film /Video, Chicago 3Arts Grant, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, and Rauschenberg Residency, Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video 2016, United States Artists Award 2017, 2016 inaugural recipient of the Ellsworth Kelly Award, 2020 recipient of the Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2022 Heinz Award. Smith joined the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture in 2022.
Pilar Tompkins Rivas
Pilar Tompkins Rivas is Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Curatorial and Collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Previously, she served as the Director and Chief Curator at the Vincent Price Art Museum, where she spearheaded partnerships between the museum and other institutions and launched diversity pipeline programs including a Museum Studies certificate program. Prior to her tenure at VPAM, she served as the Coordinator of Curatorial Initiatives at LACMA, co-directing the institution’s UCLA/LACMA Art History Practicum Initiative and the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program in addition to co-curating exhibitions in partnership with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. She is completing a Ph.D. in cultural studies and holds an M.A. in cultural studies from Claremont Graduate University, in addition to a B.A. in Latin American studies and a B.F.A. in studio art from the University of Texas at Austin.
Photo by: Monica Orozco
Emeritus
Glenn Kaino
Miwon Kwon
Gary Simmons
Joan Weinstein
Stephanie Barron
Catherine Opie
Gary Cypress
Jim Shaw
John C. Welchman, Founding Chair