Ken Gonzales-Day, Lisa Mark and Cauleen Smith Join the Board of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts

April 23, 2025

Los Angeles, CA​ (April 24, 2025) — The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts announced today the appointment of artist Ken Gonzales-Day, museum leader Lisa Mark, and artist Cauleen Smith to its Board of Directors. They join Chair Edward Rada and members Elizabeth Armstrong, Connie Butler, Gianna Drake-Kerrison, Claire Peeps, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas.

“The Foundation is thrilled to welcome Ken, Lisa, and Cauleen to the board," said Rada. “They bring with them a profound commitment to the arts and arts education, as well as personal connections to the Foundation and its mission of supporting critical thinking, risk taking, and provocation in the arts. We are fortunate to have their expertise and experience as we look towards the future.” 

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. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Getty, LACMA, MOCA, MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, among others. 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, the Smithsonian (SARF), and The Rockefeller Foundation. He has served on the Boards of the College Art Association (CAA), the Archives of American Art Journal, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). He was on the selection committee for the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts Organizational Support Grants in 2024, and holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in Art at Scripps College. “Like many, I have long admired Mike Kelley’s work and I was thrilled to be invited to join the board of the Foundation because I have the deepest respect for its commitment to critically engaged work, its focus on supporting SoCal arts organizations, and for its often-crucial support of conceptually rich artist-focused projects. MKFA remains an important source of funding for the Los Angeles arts community and for preserving and promoting Kelley's work, both locally and abroad, while celebrating Kelley's place in the contemporary art landscape,” explained Gonzales-Day.

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. “Mike Kelley's impact as an artist is immeasurable. I had the privilege of working with him during his lifetime, and I'm deeply honored to be given the opportunity to help extend his unique and generous vision for future generations," said Mark. She 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.

Cauleen Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Her work is currently on view at the Hammer in Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal and her film was recently featured in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s Doc Fortnight 2025. The artist’s short films, feature film, installation, and performance work were showcased at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019 and she has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MassMoCA, and LACMA. Smith is the recipient of the Rockefeller Media Arts Awards, the Creative Capital Award in Film/Video, the Chicago 3Arts Grant, the Chicago Expo Artadia Award, the Rauschenberg Residency, the Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video (2016), the United States Artists Award (2017), the Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2020), the Guggenheim Fellowship (2021), and the Heinz Award (2022), as well as the inaugural recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Ellsworth Kelly Award (2016). In 2022, Smith joined the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture and served on the selection committee for the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts Organizational Support Grants in 2023. “It’s truly an honor to participate in the project of expanding and deepening our community’s understanding of Mike Kelley’s work,” remarked Smith. 

Founded in 2007 by artist Mike Kelley, the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts supports artists and arts organizations committed to supporting compelling practices and programs—including experimental projects, lesser-known artists, and daring content across a wide range of disciplines. Led by Executive Director Mary Clare Stevens, the organization has furthered Mike Kelley’s philanthropic work through the Artists Projects Grants, the Organizational Support Grants, and the current Infinite Expansion Grants, all conceived to support the creation of vital and often difficult-to-produce work in the Los Angeles area. The Foundation also preserves Mike Kelley’s legacy more broadly and advances the understanding of his life and creative achievements through exhibitions, loans from its collections, and providing information and resources to curators, scholars, students, and the public.

“I have had the honor of collaborating with and getting to know all three of our new board members over the years and have long admired their commitment to and passion for contemporary art,” remarked Stevens. “In the current climate, the need to support artists and arts organizations is more urgent than ever. I am so grateful to have Ken, Lisa, and Cauleen’s keen understanding of Los Angeles’s unique arts community and the need to foster challenging work that encourages and enlivens public discourse.”