Inspired by the launch of State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, the inaugural Summit at Crystal Bridges convened a cross-section of more than 200 leaders in the arts, education, business and philanthropy to explore Insights from a Changing America. The Summit delved into the themes and ideas raised in the exhibition, illustrating the nature of a country in the midst of transformative demographic, technological, environmental, and cultural changes. This powerful and provocative gathering connected participants with the most meaningful trends and themes at the intersection of American art and life.
Founder, Clinton Foundation
42nd President of the United States
William Jefferson Clinton, the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice, led the U.S. to the longest economic expansion in American history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs.
After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation with the mission to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity, create economic opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of climate change. In 2013, to recognize the contributions of Secretary Clinton and Chelsea to the Foundation and to acknowledge their role in shaping the Foundation’s future, the Foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Today the Foundation has staff and volunteers around the world working to improve lives through several initiatives, including the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which is helping 8.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS access lifesaving drugs. The Clinton Climate Initiative, the Clinton Development Initiative, and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership are applying a business-oriented approach to fight climate change worldwide and to promote sustainable economic growth in Africa and Latin America. In the U.S., the Foundation is working to combat the alarming rise in childhood obesity and preventable disease through the Alliance for a Healthier Generation and the Clinton Health Matters Initiative. Established in 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative brings together global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues. So far, more than 2,800 Clinton Global Initiative commitments have improved the lives of more than 430 million people in 180 nations.
President Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. He and his wife Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton have one daughter, Chelsea, and live in Chappaqua, New York.
Vanessa German lives and works in the Homewood community in Pittsburgh, PA, which provides both the material and substance of her art. Her enigmatic child-figures, literally and figuratively rebuilt from the fragments of other children’s dolls, are seers, protectors, gatherers and keepers of family secrets. Critic Michael Amy writes, “German’s figures literally carry their history. Their skin, which marks them as inferior in the eyes of most white people, is camouflaged by mountains of accreted objects, only their heads and legs—seemingly too small to bear all of this weight—sticking out at top and bottom. They seem stunned, rendered numb by history […] They are the other, and thus possess magical powers, activated by the ex-votos affixed to their bodies.” Drawing upon the richness of black experience, her contemporary power figures engage a cross-cultural tradition of encrusted bodies, whose ritual functions point to the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.
The third of five children, German was born in Wisconsin and raised in Compton, just south of Los Angeles. Her mother was an accomplished fiber artist who instilled in her children the values of craft and encouraged them to create their own stories for entertainment. “We grew up with the ingredients to make ‘stuff’… and most importantly, fully realized faith in our imaginations. This is how we stayed alive—making our ideas leave our bodies through our hands, becoming tangible—and righteous enough for us to keep wanting to do it.”
German has performed and exhibited her work widely since 2005. Recent exhibitions include The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore; and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
This summer Art Everywhere created the largest public display of art in history by featuring 58 American masterworks on 50,000 outdoor billboards, bus shelters, and other sites across all 50 states. Founder Richard Reed discusses Art Everywhere’s origins, significance and how it evolved into a global phenomenon.
Richard Reed is the co-founder of innocent, the No.1 smoothie brand in Europe. The business was started from a market stall in 1999 by Reed and two friends and has grown into a business with a turnover of over £200m, selling in 15 different countries across Europe. The innocent business is led by a mission to ‘taste good and do good,’ and gives ten percent of profits each year to charity. The founders recently sold their controlling stake in innocent to Coca Cola in a deal valuing the business at over half a billion dollars and remain on the board as minority shareholders.
As well as co-founding innocent, Reed is the co-founder of Jam Jar Investments, a company that backs young entrepreneurs; the co-founder of Art Everywhere, the world’s largest art show; and the co-founder of The Reed Page Foundation, a personal charity that funds peace-brokering and environmental protection initiatives across the world. Reed is also Chairman of the innocent foundation, a Patron of Peace One Day, and has at various stages in his career been a non-Executive at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, a director of the human rights charity Videre, and a government advisor on entrepreneurship. Reed’s and innocent’s awards include E&Y’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year; Britain’s Greatest Business at ITV’s Great Britons Awards; Most Admired Business Leader by Marketing magazine; National Business Awards’ Small/ /Medium Business of the Year, and Orange Innovative Company of the Year.
As demonstrated by the State of the Art exhibition, American contemporary art is being created throughout the country, in every kind of setting, by every kind of artist—and for every community. What are the benefits for artists and audiences in this thriving regional art expansion? What does it mean for the way we think about today’s art and the traditions of American art history?
Don Bacigalupi, Ph.D., has more than 20 years of comprehensive experience in museum management. Dr. Bacigalupi joined Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as executive director in 2009, responsible for the planning, organization, construction, and inauguration of the Museum. Since its opening in November, 2011, he has overseen the key areas of professional staffing, governance, collections, exhibitions, and education programs.
Prior to joining Crystal Bridges, Dr. Bacigalupi served as president, director, and CEO of the Toledo Museum of Art. There he oversaw the construction and 2006 opening of the renowned Glass Pavilion, designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning firm SANAA (Sejima + Nishizawa and Associates), which was named “Best Museum” design in the world by Travel and Leisure magazine in 2007. He previously served as executive director of the San Diego Museum of Art; director and chief curator of the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston; and the Brown Curator of Contemporary Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
A specialist in post-WWII American art, Dr. Bacigalupi has contributed to publications and exhibition catalogs addressing a wide range of topics, including contemporary art in many media, and he has lectured throughout the United States and abroad. He has served on the boards of organizations such as the Association of Art Museum Directors and the national committee of the International Council of Museums. He has also been active in the American Association of Museums. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards.
Dr. Bacigalupi received his master’s and doctorate degrees in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, and his bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Houston, where he was honored as valedictorian. He was a 1996 fellow at the Getty Trust.
Ruby Lerner is the founding Executive Director and President of Creative Capital, an innovative arts foundation that adapts venture capital concepts to support individual artists. Under her leadership, Creative Capital has committed $30 million in financial and advisory support to 419 projects representing 529 artists.
Prior to Creative Capital, Lerner served as the Executive Director of the Association of Independent Film and Videomakers (AIVF) and as Publisher of the highly regarded Independent Film and Video Monthly. Having worked regionally in both the performing arts and independent media fields, she served as the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, a coalition of Southeastern performing artists, and IMAGE Film/Video Center, both based in Atlanta. In the late 1970s, she was the Audience Development Director at the Manhattan Theatre Club, one of New York’s foremost nonprofit theaters.
Lerner was a 30th Anniversary ArtTable Honoree (2011) and has also received the John L. Haber Award from the University of North Carolina (2009), the Catalyst Award from the National Association of Artists Organizations (2007), and the BAXten Award from the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2007), among others.
She has served on numerous boards, steering committees and grant-making panels, and consulted with hundreds of arts organizations on audience development and related areas of arts management. A native of North Carolina, Lerner worked in the state’s visiting artist program following graduate work in theater at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her undergraduate degree is in comparative religion from Goucher College.
John Riepenhoff was born in 1982 in Milwaukee, WI and received his BFA from the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, WI. He is represented by Marlborough Gallery.
Riepenhoff is a curator and co-owner of The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; co-organizer of The Milwaukee International and Dark Fairs; and is an inventor of artistic platforms for the expression of others. His recent exhibitions and curatorial projects have been presented at the Tate Modern and Frieze Art Fair, London; Marlborough, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, James Fuentes, and the Swiss Institute, New York, NY; Pepin Moore, Freedman Fitzpatrick, and Ooga Booga, Los Angeles, CA; The Suburban, Oak Park, IL; White Flag Projects, St Louis; Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI; and the Poor Farm, Manawa, WI; and the Milwaukee Art Museum, Dean Jensen Gallery, Small Space, Milwaukee, WI. He also continues a program of The John Riepenhoff Experience at various locations around the world, most recently at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
Arianna Huffington is the chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of fourteen books.
In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
She has been named to Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union.
She serves on several boards, including HuffPost’s partners in Spain, the newspaper EL PAÍS and its parent company PRISA; Onex; The Center for Public Integrity; and The Committee to Protect Journalists.
Her 14th book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder was published by Crown in March 2014 and debuted at #1 in the New York Times Bestseller list.
Sculptor and performer Vanessa German speaks on the power of art at the intersection of tenderness, wonder, street violence and trauma. Mining her sculptural work through performance, German speaks to the creative process and her work as a citizen artist.
Vanessa German lives and works in the Homewood community in Pittsburgh, PA, which provides both the material and substance of her art. Her enigmatic child-figures, literally and figuratively rebuilt from the fragments of other children’s dolls, are seers, protectors, gatherers and keepers of family secrets. Critic Michael Amy writes, “German’s figures literally carry their history. Their skin, which marks them as inferior in the eyes of most white people, is camouflaged by mountains of accreted objects, only their heads and legs—seemingly too small to bear all of this weight—sticking out at top and bottom. They seem stunned, rendered numb by history […] They are the other, and thus possess magical powers, activated by the ex-votos affixed to their bodies.” Drawing upon the richness of black experience, her contemporary power figures engage a cross-cultural tradition of encrusted bodies, whose ritual functions point to the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.
The third of five children, German was born in Wisconsin and raised in Compton, just south of Los Angeles. Her mother was an accomplished fiber artist who instilled in her children the values of craft and encouraged them to create their own stories for entertainment. “We grew up with the ingredients to make ‘stuff’… and most importantly, fully realized faith in our imaginations. This is how we stayed alive—making our ideas leave our bodies through our hands, becoming tangible—and righteous enough for us to keep wanting to do it.”
German has performed and exhibited her work widely since 2005. Recent exhibitions include The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore; and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Keith Banks is president of U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, which provides integrated investment, trust, banking, and lending services to wealthy clients. He also oversees Global Wealth & Investment Management Banking, which delivers a broad range of customized banking, credit, and lending solutions to help meet the needs of high-net-worth individuals, and BofA Global Capital Management, which offers money market funds, offshore funds, customized separate accounts, and sub-advisory services to institutions and high-net-worth individuals. Banks is a board member of the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, and he sits on Bank of America’s Chief Executive Officer’s Operating Committee and Global Diversity & Inclusion Council.
Banks previously served as president of Global Private Client, Institutional and Investment Management for Bank of America. He joined Bank of America in 2004. During his career at Bank of America, he also served as president of Global Wealth & Investment Management and president and chief investment officer of Columbia Management. Prior to this, Banks held the roles of CIO and CEO of FleetBoston Financial’s asset management organization after joining the company in 2000.
Prior to joining FleetBoston, Banks was a managing director and head of U.S. equity for JP Morgan Investment Management. He began his investment career as an equity analyst at Home Insurance in 1981.
Banks earned his bachelor’s degree in economics, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Rutgers University, and his MBA degree in finance from Columbia Business School. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the American Bankers Association Investment Advisory Committee.
Art has been a compelling and powerful advocate for social and political change. Contemporary artists are creatively confronting some of the most pressing issues facing our communities, our country and the world. Maya Lin is such an artist. Her recent and on-going project, What is Missing, focuses on raising awareness about species and habitat loss. She will discuss how her work as an artist intersects with her concerns about the environment.
Maya Lin’s acclaimed work encompasses large-scale environmental installations, intimate studio artworks, architectural works, and memorials. She virtually redefined the idea of monument with her very first work, the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, and since then has gone on to pursue a remarkable career in both art and architecture, whilst still being committed to the exploration of time, memory, history, and language in her memorials.
Lin’s artwork exudes a profound respect and love for the natural environment. Her interest in landscape has led to works influenced by topographies and geographic phenomena. Her work asks the viewer to reconsider nature and the environment at a time when it is crucial to do so.
Her architectural projects include the new campus master plan and main building for Novartis in Cambridge, MA, and recent completed works include the Museum for Chinese in America in New York City, the Riggio-Lynch Chapel and Langston Hughes Library for the Children’s Defense Fund, and a private residence in Colorado that was honored as one of Architecture Record’s Record Houses in 2006. Her designs create a close dialogue between the landscape and built environment, and she is committed to advocating sustainable design solutions in all her works.
Maya Lin has been profiled in Time Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Smithsonian, and Art in America, among others. The 1996 documentary about her work, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In 2009, Lin was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.
Bill Ruprecht was unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sotheby’s in December 2012, assuming those duties in addition to his role as President and Chief Executive Officer, which he has held since 2000.
He oversees a global, pioneering art business that operates in 40 countries, with principal salerooms in New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris. Sotheby’s is the only global auction house that is a public company (NYSE:BID). Under Ruprecht’s leadership, Sotheby’s has broadened its focus from an iconic auction business to include branded private gallery sales, an expanding art-related finance business, retail wine and diamonds, and global education programs.
A graduate of the University of Vermont, where he studied sculpture and fine art, Ruprecht joined Sotheby’s in 1980 as an administrator in the rug department. He eventually moved from the specialist side of the company to the business side and was appointed Director of Marketing for North America in 1986.
He was appointed director of Sotheby’s Marketing Worldwide in 1992 and in 1994 became Managing Director of Sotheby’s North and South America, with responsibility for the day-to-day management of Sotheby’s US auction business. From 1995 to 2003, Ruprecht served as Principal Auctioneer for Sotheby’s New York.
Digital technology now touches almost every aspect of our lives. With “everything” online, art is more available to more people than ever before. How do artists adapt and leverage the new tools and information at their disposal? How does the digital age benefit and expand art audiences? Will this new age impact what is considered enduring art?
David Adey was born in Morristown, New Jersey. He received his MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2002. His work was featured in the 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Torrance Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
His work has appeared in publications such as Art in America, Art Ltd., LA Weekly, Wired Magazine, Installation Magazine, Artbound by KCET, The San Diego Union Tribune and The Huffington Post. Adey was the subject of an artist profile documentary film titled Art by Constraint by filmmaker Dale Schierholt which premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and aired on KPBS San Diego Television.
He is currently Professor of Art and Design at Point Loma Nazarene University. He is represented by Scott White Contemporary Art in San Diego.
Jim Breyer is the Founder/CEO of Breyer Capital, an innovative investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a Partner at Accel Partners, a leading venture capital firm. In 2013, 2012 and 2011, Forbes ranked Breyer #1 in its Midas List of top technology investors. Fortune also named him the smartest investor in technology and one of the 10 smartest people in the technology industry.
Breyer led Accel’s investment in Facebook in 2005 and served on the Board of Directors from 2005 until 2013. He was also the founding Chairman of the Facebook Compensation Committee. He served on the Board of Directors of Walmart for more than a decade where he was the presiding independent director until his retirement from the Board in 2013. He also served on the Board of Dell Inc. from 2009 until 2013. In 2013, Breyer joined the Board of 21st Century Fox where he is Chairman of the Compensation Committee and a member of the Nominating Committee.
Breyer is a long-time Trustee of the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, on the Board of Advisors to the Chair of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Tsinghua School of Engineering and Management in Beijing and in 2005 was named an Honorary Professor at the 1,000 year-old Yuelu Academy at Hunan University.
He graduated with Distinction from Stanford University with a BS degree and from Harvard University with an MBA degree, where he was named a Baker Scholar. In February, 2013, he was elected a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, Harvard University’s senior governing board.
Sean Gourley is a physicist, decathlete, political advisor, and TED fellow. He is originally from New Zealand where he ran for national elected office and helped start New Zealand’s first nanotech company. Gourley studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he received a PhD for his research on the mathematical patterns that underlie modern war. This research has taken him all over the world from the Pentagon to the United Nations and Iraq. Previously Gourley worked at NASA on self-repairing nano-circuits and is a two-time New Zealand track and field champion. He is now based in San Francisco where he is the co-founder and CTO of Quid, an augmented intelligence company.
Yana Peel is CEO of Intelligence Squared Group, the world’s leading forum for live debate. Having co-founded Outset Contemporary Art Fund as a cultural foundation in 2003, Peel maintains board and advisory positions across the arts that include: Tate Executive Council, British Fashion Council, V&A, V-A-C Foundation Moscow, Lincoln Center, Para/Site Art Space and Asia Art Archive. Most recently, she was selected by the South China Morning Post as one of “10 outstanding women for this year (2014),” authored the third in her series of best-selling children’s books to benefit the National Society for the Protection against Cruelty to Children (Art for Baby) and received the Mont Blanc Award for Arts Patronage. She is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a regular contributor to Davos.
Peel was born in St Petersburg, Russia. She attended McGill University, completed her post-graduate studies in Economics at LSE, and started her career at Goldman Sachs.
As education strategy adapts to accommodate the current and future needs of a population and a workforce, a variety of initiatives emphasize learning 21st-century skills. Many of these ideas embrace art’s integration into curricula, helping to build critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and other key skills. Is the American education system effectively creating innovative thinkers? How can the arts enhance these aspects of education and what is the role of museums in facilitating the process?
John E. Brown III has served as the Executive Director of the Windgate Charitable Foundation since its founding in 1993. The Foundation’s grants are primarily directed to arts education projects, K-12 school improvement programs, higher education initiatives, programs to strengthen family relationships, and some human service programs.
He is a former president of John Brown University, the Christian college founded by his late grandfather in 1919. He received a B.S. degree in Business Administration from JBU in 1971 and a J.D. from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, School of Law in 1974. Brown also joined the JBU staff in 1974 and served as president from 1979-1993.
From 1995-2002, Brown served two terms as a Senator in the Arkansas Legislature. He sat on various committees, including the Senate Education Committee, the Joint Budget Committee, and the Legislative Council. For one term he served as co-chair of the Joint Interim Committee on Children and Youth. While a State Senator, he authored and passed major legislation in juvenile justice, nursing home care, and education.
Brown served twice as Chairman of the Board of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), a national coalition of (then) over 1200 Christian ministries which subscribe to fund-raising and financial disclosure standards for membership. He is currently a trustee of John Brown University and is Board President of Philanthropy Southwest, a professional association of some 240 grantmakers.
Tom Finkelpearl is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In this role he oversees city funding for nonprofit arts organizations across the five boroughs and directs the cultural policy for the City of New York. Prior to his appointment by Mayor Bill de Blasio, Commissioner Finkelpearl served as Executive Director of the Queens Museum for twelve years starting in 2002, overseeing an expansion that doubled the museum’s size and positioning the organization as a vibrant center for social engagement in nearby communities. He also held positions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, working on the organization’s merger with the Museum of Modern Art, and served as Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program. Based on his public art experience and additional research, he published a book, Dialogues in Public Art (MIT Press), in 2000. His second book, What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation (Duke University Press, 2013) examines the activist, participatory, coauthored aesthetic experiences being created in contemporary art. He received a BA from Princeton University (1979) and an MFA from Hunter College (1983).
Hope Ginsburg (b. 1974) is a visual artist whose project-based work spans sculpture, performance, and craft. Foregrounding learning, often learning about the natural world, she has taken up with honeybees, composting redworms, and sponges. An ongoing interest in exchanging such knowledge with others has fused with Ginsburg’s performative impulse; she has produced countless workshops and events over the past several years, many under the aegis of her Sponge project (2006-present). Though a large part of her practice resides with these time-based undertakings, Ginsburg maintains a deep and abiding love of material (specifically fiber and textiles) which is expressed through object-making and the design of environments. Her work is frequently collaborative; many projects over the last few years have involved her students.
Ginsburg holds a BFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art (1996) and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007). In 1997 she attended Skowhegan, shortly before moving to New York, where she lived and worked for eight years. She has exhibited at venues such as MoMA P.S.1, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, SculptureCenter, and Socrates Sculpture Park. In addition, she has had solo exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, the Julia Friedman Gallery, and Parlour Projects, as well as Solvent Space in Richmond. The permanent installation of her Sponge HQ project space and classroom is sited at the Anderson Gallery at VCUarts.
In the fall of 2007 Ginsburg moved to Richmond, VA to teach at the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University where she is now an Associate Professor in the Art Foundation Program and the Department of Painting & Printmaking.
A poetic vision of Earth from space, BELLA GAIA (Beautiful Earth) is a live audiovisual experience that combines NASA satellite imagery of Earth, time-lapse nature photography, and cultural heritage footage with live performances. Inspired by astronauts who speak of the life-changing power of seeing Earth from space, BELLA GAIA explores the relationship between art and science, humans and nature, through time and space
Performed by Kenji Williams,
Founder & Director, BELLA GAIA
With voices of the Bentonville High School Chamber Choir
What strategies will be employed by successful museums of the future, given advances in technology, the public’s thirst for constant change, and America’s shifting demographics? What current innovations and ideas in museums and other industry sectors foreshadow future museum trends?
Adam Lerner is the Director and Chief Animator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver). In 2004, he founded The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar (The Lab) to explore the changing nature of art and museums. In 2009, The Lab merged with MCA Denver when Lerner took the helm of the museum. Lerner’s programs have been adopted by museums throughout North America and a recent article in the New York Times stated that Lerner’s work to engage audiences is “reshaping what has become a stale model for a contemporary art museum.” Lerner was formerly the Master Teacher for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Denver Art Museum and the curator of the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore. Lerner earned his PhD from the Johns Hopkins University (2001) and received his Master’s degree from Cambridge University. His recently released books include From Russia With Doubt: The Quest to Authenticate 181 Would-be Masterpieces of the Russian Avant-Garde and Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia, both published by Princeton Architectural Press.
Yana Peel is CEO of Intelligence Squared Group, the world’s leading forum for live debate. Having co-founded Outset Contemporary Art Fund as a cultural foundation in 2003, Peel maintains board and advisory positions across the arts that include: Tate Executive Council, British Fashion Council, V&A, V-A-C Foundation Moscow, Lincoln Center, Para/Site Art Space and Asia Art Archive. Most recently, she was selected by the South China Morning Post as one of “10 outstanding women for this year (2014),” authored the third in her series of best-selling children’s books to benefit the National Society for the Protection against Cruelty to Children (Art for Baby) and received the Mont Blanc Award for Arts Patronage. She is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a regular contributor to Davos.
Peel was born in St Petersburg, Russia. She attended McGill University, completed her post-graduate studies in Economics at LSE, and started her career at Goldman Sachs.
Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. Embracing a comprehensive and humane design philosophy, Safdie is committed to architecture that supports and enhances a project’s program; that is informed by the geographic, social, and cultural elements that define a place; and that responds to human needs and aspirations. Safdie has completed a wide range of projects, such as cultural, educational, and civic institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; mixed-use urban centers and airports; and master plans for existing communities and entirely new cities around the world.
Major projects by Safdie Architects currently under construction or recently completed include Mamilla Alrov Center, a dynamic urban center near the Old City in Jerusalem; Marina Bay Sands, a mixed-use integrated resort in Singapore; Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex, the national museum of the Sikh people in the Punjab, India; the United States Institute of Peace Headquarters on the Mall in Washington, D.C.; the National Campus for the Archeology of Israel in Jerusalem; Golden Dream Bay, a high-density residential project in Qinhuangdao, China; the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri; and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1938, Safdie relocated to Canada with his family in 1953. He graduated from McGill University in 1961 with a degree in architecture. After apprenticing with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for the 1967 World Exhibition. In 1964 he established his own firm to realize Habitat ‘67, an adaptation of his thesis at McGill, which was the central feature of the World’s Fair and a groundbreaking design in the history of architecture.
Insights from a Changing America The convergence of new technology, accessible information and rapidly changing consumer tastes has resulted in an unprecedented rate of cultural change. We experience the change in communities across America and in today’s conversations, trends and artistic expressions. What are the driving forces of a changing America? Which meaningful trends and themes are redefining American art and its role in American life? What happens next?
Panelists:
Jeffrey Katzenberg is the Chief Executive Officer and a Co-Founder and Director of DreamWorks Animation SKG. In 1994, along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, he co-founded DreamWorks SKG, which produced a number of celebrated films including three Best Picture Academy Award® winners – American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. In 2004, DreamWorks Animation became a publicly-traded company with Katzenberg at the helm.
Under Katzenberg’s leadership, DreamWorks Animation has become the largest animation studio in the world and has released 28 animated feature films, which have enjoyed both critical and commercial successes, earning fifteen Academy Award® nominations and two wins for Best Animated Feature. In addition to critical success, DreamWorks Animation has been recognized as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” by FORTUNE® Magazine for five consecutive years. In 2013, DreamWorks Animation ranked #12 on the list.
Prior to co-founding DreamWorks, Katzenberg served as Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, and previously served as President of Paramount Studios.
In 2013, Katzenberg was awarded the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes.
Doug McMillon is the president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. As CEO, under his leadership, Walmart is bringing together its stores, logistics network, and digital commerce capabilities in new ways to empower customers to shop whenever, wherever, and however they want.
From February 2009 to February 2014, McMillon served as president and chief executive officer of Walmart International, a fast-growing segment of Walmart’s overall operations, with more than 6,400 stores and nearly 800,000 associates in 26 countries outside the United States. From 2006 to 2009, he served as president and chief executive officer of Sam’s Club, an operating segment of Walmart, with sales of more than $46 billion annually during his tenure.
In 1984, McMillon started out as an hourly summer associate in a Walmart distribution center. In 1990, while pursuing his MBA, he rejoined the company as an assistant manager in a Tulsa, Okla., Walmart store before moving to merchandising as a buyer trainee. He went on to serve in successful senior leadership roles in all of Walmart’s business segments.
McMillon serves on the boards of directors for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the Consumer Goods Forum, Enactus and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. He also serves on the executive committee of Business Roundtable and the Dean’s Advisory Board for the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas.
Originally from Jonesboro, Ark., McMillon graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor of science in business administration. He earned his MBA in finance from the University of Tulsa.
Darren Walker is the president of the Ford Foundation, the second-largest philanthropy in the United States. As the Ford Foundation’s vice president for Education, Creativity and Free Expression from 2010 to 2013, he oversaw programs in media and journalism, arts and culture, sexuality and reproductive health and rights, educational access and opportunity, and religion. He was a driving force behind JustFilms, one of the largest documentary film funds in the world, ArtPlace, a public-private collaboration that supports cultural development in cities and rural areas in America, and many other initiatives. He also oversaw regional programming in the foundation’s four offices in Africa and the Middle East.
Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, Walker was vice president for foundation initiatives at the Rockefeller Foundation. Beginning in 2002, he helped guide the foundation’s programs in education, civil rights, workforce development, and program-related investments. He also supervised Rockefeller’s regional offices overseas, initiated new programming in urban development and arts and culture, and led its post-Katrina New Orleans Recovery Program.
After beginning his career at the international law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Walker joined the Union Bank of Switzerland’s capital markets division in 1988, staying there for seven years. When he left UBS, it was to volunteer at The Children’s Storefront, an elementary school serving low-income families in Harlem. He entered the nonprofit sector as chief operating officer for the Abyssinian Development Corporation, a community development organization in Harlem.
Born in Louisiana and raised in Texas, Walker graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 1982 and its School of Law in 1986.
Stephanie N. Mehta is a business journalist and editorial consultant. She has served as the deputy editor of FORTUNE, where she helped set the overall direction of the magazine, with a special focus in technology, international news and policy coverage. She helped reinvent Fortune’s annual Brainstorm Tech conference, and spearheaded the international expansion of its Most Powerful Women summit. Mehta joined FORTUNE from The Wall Street Journal, where she was an assistant news editor, reporting and editing technology stories. She wrote extensively about telecommunications at the Journal, focusing on wireless and local phone companies. Mehta joined the Journal in 1994 as a staff reporter for the paper’s Enterprise group and was promoted to deputy bureau chief of that group in 1996. Prior to joining the Journal, she worked as a business reporter for the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. She received a B.S. in English and an M.S. in journalism from Northwestern University.
Stephanie N. Mehta is a business journalist and editorial consultant. She has served as the deputy editor of FORTUNE, where she helped set the overall direction of the magazine, with a special focus in technology, international news and policy coverage. Mehta joined FORTUNE from The Wall Street Journal, where she was an assistant news editor, reporting and editing technology stories. Prior to joining the Journal, she worked as a business reporter for the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. She received a B.S. in English and an M.S. in journalism from Northwestern University.
Five State of the Art artists share their stories of the many ways in which their lives inspire and influence their work, their involvement in their communities, and the distinctive decision-making that underpins their respective practices.
Panelists:
Mequitta Ahuja received her MFA from UIC in 2003, mentored by Kerry James Marshall. Her work has been exhibited across the US as well as in Paris, Brussels, London, Berlin, India, and Dubai. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s 12X12, Bravin Lee Programs in New York, Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris, France, Thierry Goldberg Gallery in NY and a two-person show at the Bakersfield Museum of Art.
Group exhibitions include: Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, Houston Collects African American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Undercover at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Usable Pasts at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Portraiture Now at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, among others. Ahuja’s work has appeared in Modern Painters, March 2007, and Art News, February 2007. In February 2010, she was profiled as an “Artist to Watch” in ArtNews.
Ahuja received a 2011 Tiffany Foundation Award, a 2009 Joan Mitchell Award and a 2008 Houston Artadia Prize. Public collections include the Ulrich Museum in Wichita KS, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and The US State Department’s Mumbai, India offices. Ahuja was a 2009-2010 artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She was the 2011-2012 Stewart McMillan artist-in-residence at Maryland Institute College of Art, and a 2014 Project Fellow at the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy. She is represented in Europe by Galerie Nathalie Obadia, and lives in Baltimore, MD.
Zoë Charlton received her MFA degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Charlton has had residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and at The Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD. Her work has been included in national and international museum exhibitions, including the Contemporary Art Museum (Houston, TX), the Studio Museum of Harlem (NYC, NY), Wendy Cooper Gallery (Chicago, IL), the Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw, Poland), and Haas & Fischer Gallery (Zurich, Switzerland); and is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner grant. Charlton is on the faculty at American University in Washington, DC. She is represented by ConnerSmith, Washington D.C.
Angela Ellsworth is a multidisciplinary artist traversing disciplines of drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Her solo and collaborative work has taken in wide-ranging subjects such as physical fitness, endurance, illness, social ritual, and religious tradition. She is interested in art merging with everyday life and public and private experiences colliding in unexpected spaces.
Ellsworth has presented work nationally and internationally including the Getty Center (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, Australia), Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw, Poland), National Review of Live Art (Glasgow, Scotland), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (Los Angeles, CA), Museum of Contemporary Art (Denver, CO), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Scottsdale, AZ), and Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, AZ) to name a few. She is represented by Lisa Sette Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona and Fehily Contemporary in Melbourne, Australia and is an Associate Professor in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.
Susie J. Lee explores intimacy and connection through technology, fluidly embedding new media across many platforms. Recognized as Emerging Artist of the Year for the “intelligence, emotion and sensuality” of her work, Lee was also named “Artist to Watch” by ARTnews.
Her work has been exhibited and commissioned in the US and abroad, in such venues as the Mitchell Center for the Arts, Denver Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Blanton Museum, and in Italy and Korea. Lee’s Still Lives traveled from the Portland Art Museum to the Frye Art Museum and Tacoma Art Museum and featured in The Huffington Post. The North Dakota Museum of Art commissioned Split Open to reveal lives impacted by fracking.
Lee has been awarded numerous regional arts awards, and her work is in notable public collections such as the Denver Art Museum and Portland Art Museum. She is the CEO and founder of Siren, a social discovery app that connects people creatively.
Tim Liddy was born in 1963 and was raised in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. Currently, he is a tenured professor of art at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, MO. When not in the studio constructing allegories to art, Liddy looks forward to cooking with his 6-year-old son, Winston, and his wife, Rebecca.
In his recent paintings the idea of play has been a recurring theme. Basing his circa series primarily on the reproduction of vintage board game covers, Liddy sometimes plays within the boundaries of truth and fiction—never letting on which is real and which is not—in his own period assimilations.
A keen observer will see decades of American culture unfold within these board games: social norms and paradigms, gender and racial stereotypes, class separation, and occupational procurement, among other underlying themes. By Liddy re-contextualizing the subject, viewers get a glimpse of our shared past, perhaps experiencing fond nostalgia or utter embarrassment.
Curator Chad Alligood joined Crystal Bridges in July, 2013, working with Crystal Bridges President Don Bacigalupi in curating State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now. Beyond State of the Art, Alligood’s ongoing work at Crystal Bridges focuses on the collection, presentation, and scholarship of modern and contemporary American art, with an emphasis on the postwar period. Alligood’s research and exhibitions have focused on American art since 1900, and his areas of particular interest include contemporary art, art of the 1960s and ‘70s, and art of the west coast.
Alligood is a Perry, Georgia native who earned his bachelor’s degree in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University, his master’s degree in Art History from the University of Georgia, and has completed his PhD coursework at City University of New York (CUNY). After serving as adjunct professor of art history at Brooklyn College from 2010 to 2012, Alligood went on to become a Curatorial Intern for Collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where he provided research support for the development of large exhibitions of modern art in New York and abroad.
Alligood received the Kress Foundation Fellowship from Smith College Institute for Art Museum Studies, and came to Crystal Bridges from Cranbrook Art Museum where he was serving as the Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow.