PERMANENT POSITIONS

1993, January-April
Interim Executive Director and Curator, MCBA, Minneapolis
In addition to continuing my responsibilities as curator, in my role as interim executive director I managed the programmatic activity and fundraising at Minnesota Center for Book Arts (http://www.mnbookarts.org), during the search for a new executive director (I was not a candidate for the job). I supervised four staff members, managed site needs, wrote grant requests for general operating support, acted as a liaison with the board of directors, and served as MCBA’s spokesperson.

1988-1993
Curator, Minnesota Center for Book Arts
See below for selected list of exhibitions.
I planned and executed about fifty exhibitions at MCBA and at other sites. MCBA is an arts and educational non-profit organization that houses studio workshops, a gallery, a museum shop, a library, and an archive of its studio publications and related working materials. It has no permanent collection; exhibitions are curated with materials from local, national and international collections. As curator, I worked with artists, collectors and other curators and administrators in the literary and artistic worlds. I edited exhibition catalogues and brochures, some of which published my writings, which were reviewed by publications including Print Collector’s Newsletter (now Art on Paper), Bookways, and Umbrella. 

In 1991 I launched MCBA’s traveling exhibitions program in order to project MCBA’s influence into a national audience and to generate income from host site fees. Host sites included the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rochester Institute of Technology (New York), the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), UCLA, Brown University, HarperCollins gallery in Manhattan, Emory University (Atlanta), and Arizona State University (Tempe).
 
Additional responsibilities included administering MCBA’s fellowship program to support the creation of original work in the book form, and grant-writing to support exhibitions programming (in five years I raised over $150,000 in government and corporate support). Before leaving MCBA in April 1993 I completed two requests to the National Endowment for the Arts and to Minnesota’s McKnight Foundation, to fund a symposium in 1994 that examined new trends in criticism. Both requests were funded.

1984-1988
Program Director, Minnesota Center for Book Arts
I created MCBA’s initial programming: researching, planning, and executing a full array of educational and artistic offerings (MCBA opened in 1985). I curated MCBA’s exhibitions from their inception in Fall 1985. The educational programs centered in MCBA’s three studios of hand papermaking, hand bookbinding and letterpress (relief) printing. Programs included classes taught by local instructors and master classes by visiting artists; lectures by local and visiting experts in the field; a school tours program; and adult demonstration tours. I also coordinated MCBA’s newsletter production and managed MCBA’s fledgling membership program. 

CURATING OF COLLECTIONS

1993-1996
Co-Curator. Phoenix Public Library. Part of a three-person team, with John Risseeuw and Louis H. Silverstein, that selected work for a comprehensive collection of artist-made books. Acquisitions budget totaled $45,000, from percent-for-art dollars for Phoenix Public Library.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2008
Curator. Minneapolis Central Library. “Altered Books.” Juror and curator for national exhibition of altered books (sculptural bookworks). Part of city-wide programming organized by MCL consisting of exhibitions, workshops, lectures.

2002-2006
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. Colorado College, Colorado Springs. The Press at Colorado College: The Pressroom as Classroom. Exhibition and illustrated catalogue explores and celebrates collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching methods at a campus press over a twenty-year period. Exhibition opened in 2004 at the Colorado Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs, and traveled to Scripps College (Claremont, California); The Newberry Library (Chicago); Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Minneapolis); and The University of the Arts (Philadelphia). I coordinated the tour, assisted as needed with installation, and presented a lecture at each opening. (http://www.coloradocollege.edu/news_events)

1998
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. Private client. Incoming Tide: Works by Clare Chanler Forster. Client: Flora Biddle, granddaughter to Gertrude Whitney, the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Arts. Illustrated catalogue. My essay discussed Forster’s work in painting, collage, sculpture, and artist’s books. MCBA published the catalogue and served as the exhibiting site, but I coordinated the exhibition and catalogue production as an independent curator.

1993
Curator. MCBA. “Building the Contemporary Book.”
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. Contemporary Classics: The Illustrated Book Redefined.
Illustrated catalogue.

1992
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. Off the Shelf and On-line: Computers Move the Book Arts into Twenty-first Century Design. lllustrated catalogue includes my essay and three other essays. Travel venues: the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), and the Hearst Center for the Arts (Cedar Falls).
Curator. MCBA. “Hitting the Books II: More Book Arts Education.” Second in series of exhibitions that highlight educational programs in the book arts. In this showing: Arizona State University-Tempe, Artists’ Book Works (Chicago), and the University of the Arts (Philadelphia). Travel venues were those three institutions.
Curator. MCBA. “Frontispiece: Rockwell Kent.”
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. Completing the Circle: Artists’ Books on the Environment. Illustrated catalogue. Travel venues: HarperCollins Publishers gallery, New York City, Pyramid Atlantic,
Riverdale, Maryland, and Schatten Gallery at Emory University, Atlanta.
Curator. MCBA. “Frontispiece: The Book of Seven Lagoons.” Artists Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison.

1991
Curator, catalogue editor. Program manager. MCBA. Jerome III: Book Arts Fellowship Winners. Illustrated catalogue.
Curator. MCBA. “Photobooks in Motion: A History of Performance Art in Artists’ Books”
Curator. MCBA. “Frontispiece: Wesley Tanner.”
Curator. MCBA. “Hitting the Books: Selections from Leading U.S. Book Arts Education Programs.” Three educational programs in the book arts highlighted: the Center for the Book at the University of Iowa-Iowa City; the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa; and Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, New York). Travel venues were those three institutions.
Curator. MCBA. “Frontispiece: Clarissa Sligh.”
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. A Kelmscott Centennial/William Morris and His Heirs: Leonard Baskin, Claire Van Vliet and Victor Hammer. Illustrated catalogue. Travel venues: Department of Special collections at the Research Library, University of California-Los Angeles; the John Hay Library at Brown University; and the Special Collections Library at Arizona State University.
Curator. MCBA. “Chapter Two: Five Years of Faculty and Friends.”

1990
Co-curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. Copier Books. Essay, “The Copier Book as Cultural Reporter and Provocateur: Its Technological and Philosophical Roots in the Avant-Garde.” Curated with Karen Wirth. Illustrated catalogue. My essay reprinted by the International Society of Copier Artists in their I.S.C.A. Quarterly Sixth Annual Bookworks Issue, Vol. 9, No. 4--Summer 1991.
Curator. MCBA. “Frontispiece: Books and Scrolls by Faith Wilding.”
Curator. MCBA. “Calligraphic Books: Lettering in Three Dimensions.”
Curator. MCBA. “Of Paradise & Concertinas: Susan E. King & Hedi Kyle.”

1989
Curator. MCBA. “Frontispiece: Karen Kunc Prints & Books.”
Curator, catalogue editor. Program manager. MCBA. Jerome II: Book Arts Fellowship Winners. Illustrated catalogue.
Curator. MCBA. Timothy C. Ely Retrospective.
Curator. MCBA. “Arion Press Books.”

1988
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. Keith A. Smith Retrospective. Illustrated catalogue.
Essay. MCBA. The Growth of Collegiate Book Arts Activity in America. Brochure with essay published on the occasion of the exhibition on show at MCBA, “Mills College Book Arts,” of student work selected by Kathy Walkup.
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. Pick up the Book, Turn the Page and Enter the System: Books by Sol LeWitt. Exhibition held in conjunction with Walker Art Center (Minneapolis). Illustrated catalogue.
Curator. MCBA. “James Henkel: Photographs with Books.”
Curator. MCBA. “Works by 4: Ann Borman, Scott Helmes, Michael Tarachow, Karen Wirth.” 

1987
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. Program manager. MCBA. Jerome I: Book Arts Fellowship Winners. Illustrated catalogue.
Curator. MCBA. “Kevin Osborn.”
Curator. MCBA. “Spillville Collaboration: Steve Sorman & Patricia Hampl.”
Curator. MCBA. “Claire Van Vliet / The Janus Press.”
Curator. MCBA. “Sylvia Rennie: Designer Bindings.”
Curator, catalogue editor and essayist. MCBA. Contemporary Book Arts. Catalogue. Created to tour (never shown at MCBA). Travel venues: Carleton College (Northfield, MN), University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and University of North Dakota-Grand Forks.

1986
Curator. MCBA. In and Out of the Mainstream: The Small Press in America. Brochure.
Curator. MCBA. “Works of Walter Hamady.”
Curator. MCBA. “Binder Jennifer A. Turrentine.”
Curator. MCBA. “Chapter One (A Sampling of Work from Students, Faculty and Visiting Artists at MCBA).”

1985
Curator. MCBA. “Midwest Contemporary Book Art.”
Curator. MCBA. “The British Book: Examples from the 15th - 20th Centuries.

JURYING

2009
Juror. Student awards for graduate and undergraduate students, sponsored by the College Book Art Association, awarded at the conference, “Art, Fact, and Artifact: The Book in Time and Place.”

2008
Juror. Minnesota Book Artist Award, to Paulette Myers-Rich, sponsored by The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library.
Juror, consultant on exhibition installation. “Altered Books,” national exhibition presented at Minneapolis Public Library. Gallery talk, didactics, etc.

2006
Juror. Minnesota Book Awards, Fine Press category.

2002
Juror. Minnesota Center for Book Arts, for “Toys and Games” exhibition.            

1998
Juror and essayist. Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, on the occasion of its first biennial exhibition. Brochure.

1992
Juror and essayist. 43rd Annual Chicago Book Clinic’s exhibition. Catalogue.
Juror. Hand Papermaking magazine. Master artist slide set. 

PUBLIC ART JURYING

Public Art Project Consulting. Served on two selection panels for the Jerome artist commission program. Selected new works installed in the Open Book building for round one (1999) and round two (2000).

VISITING SCHOLAR, CRITIC

2001
Visiting Critic. University of the Arts, Philadelphia. For M.F.A. graduates.

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