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Author: Michael Chesnick

El Museo in NY acquires Antebi’s animated essay film

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

University of Arizona School of Art Associate Professor Nicole Antebi’s animated essay film, “100 Partially Obscured Views/100 Vistas Parcialmente Oscurecidas” (2023), has been acquired by El Museo del Barrio for the New York museum’s permanent collection.

Funded in part by a Jerome Foundation Film/Video Grant, the film is told through a cascade of vintage postcards of El Paso, Juárez, and part of eastern New Mexico.

“I interrogated colonial treaties, policies, and personal and found history to locate inflection points in the changing border,” Antebi said. “The film ends with my collaborators/friends and I immersing ourselves in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo.”

Associate Professor Nicole Antebi, with her animated essay film, “100 Partially Obscured Views/100 Vistas Parcialmente Oscurecidas (2023),” at the 2023 Arizona Biennial (photo by Julius Schlosburg). Top photo: The film is part of her “Rebel Waters / Aguas Rebeldes” show in Florida.

Antebi is currently showing the film as part of her solo exhibition, “Rebel Waters / Aguas Rebeldes,” at the Crisp Crisp-Ellert Art Museum in St. Augustine, Florida. In 2025, she screened the film at the AT&T Discovery District in Dallas as part of Video Art Night. The film also was selected for the Arizona Biennial in 2023.

“I am deeply honored that this work will be preserved alongside so many seminal works of Latin American and Caribbean art,” Antebi said.

El Museo was founded in 1969 by artist and educator Raphael Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of Puerto Rican parents, educators, artists and activists who noted that mainstream museums largely ignored Latino artists.

Antebi screened her animated essay film at the AT&T Discovery District in Dallas as part of Video Art Night.

Since its inception, El Museo has been committed to celebrating and promoting Latino culture, thus becoming a cornerstone of El Barrio, and a valuable resource for New York City.

El Museo’s varied permanent collection of over 8,500 objects, spans more than 800 years of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino art, includes Taíno to modern and contemporary drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations, as well as textiles, prints, photography, documentary films, and video.

“We are thrilled to have Nicole’s video in our permanent collection,” said Lee Sessions, permanent collections associate curator for E Museo.

“100 Partially Obscured Views/100 Vistas Parcialmente Oscurecidas (2023)” is part of Antebi’s current exhibition through Nov. 7 at the Crisp-Ellert Museum in St. Augustine, Florida.

Duo’s new gallery brings Rogers’ hidden 1960s work to light

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

When curators Cooper Colescott and Sam Watts began looking through Barbara Rogers’ old sketchbooks, they discovered something even she had nearly forgotten: a trove of drawings the University of Arizona School of Art emerita professor had made in the 1960s, during her formative years as an artist and painter.

“Our relationship with Barbara inspired her to unearth her work from the past, covered in decades of dust,” said Colescott, a School of Art student. “Sam and I knew right away this would be our first major venture together.”

Now, those largely unseen drawings are the focus of the first exhibition at the duo’s new Colescott Watts Gallery in downtown Tucson. “Barbara Rogers: 1960s Works” opens to the public Friday, Oct. 2, from 4 to 8 p.m. and will be on view through December at 439 N. Sixth Ave., Suite 147.

A young Barbara Rogers and one of her 1960s drawings in the exhibition at the Colescott Watts Gallery. Top photo, from left: Sam Watts, Rogers and Cooper Colescott. (All photos courtesy of Barbara Rogers and Cooper Colescott)

“It’s amazing and almost miraculous to be starring in Cooper’s and Sam’s courageous undertaking of opening a contemporary art gallery in this exciting but turbulent time,” said Rogers, 89.

Miraculous because it was Rogers who introduced Colescott and Watts at her Christmas party in 2024, thanks to her work and friendship ties with renowned artists Robert Colescott, Cooper’s late father, and Sam Richardson, Watts’ late grandfather.

Rogers taught at the U of A School of Art with Robert Colescott, the first African American artist to represent the United States in a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1997. And she also was a visiting artist at San Jose State University with Richardson, a painter and sculptor whose pieces were composed from layers of plastic to resemble sections of the landscape.

“When Barbara introduced Sam and me, everything just clicked together,” Cooper Colescott said. “We both grew up surrounded by artists and artwork and have been working tirelessly to steward family legacies … so the idea of the gallery felt so natural to us … to celebrate the art and the artists we both love.”

Drawings from a formative decade

Their new gallery’s exhibition offers a window into Rogers’ artistic development as a student and new instructor at UC Berkeley.

“My work from the 1960s is about exploration, finding my voice and constantly going between abstraction and figuration,” she said.

Her path to that period began with a strong foundation in drawing. As an undergraduate at Ohio State University, Rogers learned to focus on the action and movement of the body rather than its details. One unusual course, taught by Professor Hoyt Sherman, trained artists to study a model for brief moments and then draw from memory, even in the dark. “We all learned how to do it,” Rogers recalled.

Barbara Rogers is featured in a recent Arizona Ilustrated profile (watch below).

That emphasis on speed and gesture would remain central to her paintings and other work.

After graduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, Rogers moved to Berkeley, where professors encouraged her to continue exploring the figure through movement and action. She received the Eisner Prize in painting upon graduation, allowing her to spend a year in New York City studying paintings in the city’s museums and drawing in sketchbooks at her kitchen table.

“I drew my husband, I drew old ladies sitting on park benches in NYC … anything and everything,” she said.

When she returned to the Bay Area, UC Berkeley hired her as an adjunct instructor in painting and drawing. The sketchbooks traveled with her through the years, unopened.

“I never really looked at those early drawings or thought about them until I opened those portfolios for Cooper and Sam,” Rogers said.

The drawings, she said, were made when she was about their ages. “It’s just astonishing to me that these two young men looked at my early work on paper and liked it so much they got it framed and are making that work the focus of their grand opening of their new gallery,” she said.

Cooper Colescott comes home

Born and raised in Tucson, Colescott is the youngest son of Robert Colescott, a painter who tackled subjects of inequality and the human condition through his rhythmic and often manic style of figuration.

Robert, who died in 2009, helped shape the School of Art’s history from 1983 to 1998 as the department’s first Regents Professor, and some of his work is included in the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA).

“My sense of humor, my outlook on life, my qualities as a father, and an artist are all due to my parents and their influences in my life,” said Cooper, whose mother, Colleen Hench, is a Tucson artist.

Cooper and his father, Robert Colescott, whose painting, “Beauty Is Only Skin Deep,” is in the University of Arizona Museum of Art.

After living in Tacoma, Washington, for about 13 years, Cooper returned to Tucson three years ago along with his wife, Jillian, and their children, Hutton and Holly. He decided to pursue a BFA in Studio Art and painting “to push the boundaries of my own artistic abilities.”

Colescott, 40, is now balancing family life, his own art education and the stewardship of his father’s legacy. Along with his brother, Alex, he helps oversee the Robert Colescott estate and recently founded the Robert Colescott Foundation to support art education and continue his father’s artistic legacy.

“Even though I only have time for a class or two a semester I’m feeling incredibly grateful to attend among the current art students, staff and faculty,” Cooper said.

‘Some things are meant to be’

As a child, Cooper remembers Rogers from when his father brought him to events at the university, UAMA and her home and studio. The fact she, Cooper and Watts ended up such good friends goes beyond coincidence, Rogers said.

“You know that old question about timing, luck and the people who come into our lives or re-enter after many years of absence,” she said. “It makes one think about the arbitrariness of everything or the Yiddish term ‘bashert,’ meaning some things are meant to be.”

Robert Colescott helped bring Rogers to the School of Art faculty in 1990 after the two had taught together at the Art Institute of San Francisco. Her connection to Watts is equally rich. Rogers met his grandfather, Richardson, in Chicago in 1975. Both artists were included in the Art Institute of Chicago’s 71st American Exhibition, and their friendship continued through their shared Bay Area art circles.

Cooper Colescott, left, and Sam Watts. “It’s just astonishing to me that these two young men looked at my early work on paper and liked it so much they got it framed and are making that work the focus of their grand opening of their new gallery,” Barbara Rogers said.

Raised in Northern California’s art community under the influence of Richardson, Watts studied painting at Cornish College of the Arts before spending a decade touring and recording as a musician. He later managed Marfa Book Company and curated exhibitions at various museums to honor his grandfather, most recently at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University,

“From a very young age, my grandfather had me in his studio,” Watts said, “and in the studios of his friends in the Bay Area, who ened up being some of my favorite artists like Nathan Oliveira and Mel Ramos,.”

When Watts moved from Marfa, Texas, to Tucson in 2024 to give his two kids better opportunities and resources, his grandmother, Adrienne Richardson, told Rogers that her grandson would be getting in touch. After Watts visited Rogers’ studio, their conversation quickly turned to the Bay Area art scene.

“I knew he was smart, savvy and grounded in Bay Area art history, like no one I had encountered since I left there to come to Tucson,” Rogers said.

That background made Watts an ideal person to help Rogers document her own experiences. At the suggestion of a longtime friend, Rogers had been considering recording an oral history of her 30 years in the Bay Area. Watts agreed to interview her, and the pair recorded 10 one-hour sessions.

A gallery built on connection

It’s fitting that the new Colescott Watts Gallery is located in the historic Firestone building in downtown Tucson, just steps from Rogers’ studio in the unit next door.

“We are so excited to present ‘Barbara Rogers 60s works,’ a body of work unknown to anyone who knows Barbara as an artist,” said Colescott. Added Watts: “This show means so much to me, as it is about as full circle an experience as life can hand you.”

Two more pieces in “Barbara Rogers: 1960s Works.”

The two curators are also looking forward to future events at the gallery.

“Sam and I both have wonderful relationships with artists, artist estates and collectors who we are so excited to work with to exhibit wonderful works of art from many different ranges,” Colescott said. “We have a couple years’ worth of artist solo exhibitions in the works, featuring artists we absolutely love and committed to, along with many group exhibitions to feature work from many different artists from many different time periods from around the world.”

Earlier, he and Watts featured the work of Jaque Fragua, who spent the summer painting in their pop-up gallery space. “We will continue working with him as we continue our gallery journey,” Colescott said.

As for Rogers, the exhibition brings her own journey as a lifelong artist and educator full circle with a collection of foundational drawings that waited decades for the right people to bring them back into view.

“I am in awe of Cooper and Sam — and their energy and genuine love and knowledge of contemporary art, artists and the history of art,” she said.

Editor’s note: As the University of Arizona School of Art moves closer to its 100th anniversary in 2027, we’re profiling former faculty and students. The Colescott Watts Gallery also will be open Oct. 3. (4-8 p.m.) and Oct. 4 (noon-3 p.m.)

On my NY gallery trip, I found Dr. Allen’s lectures everywhere

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

By Olivia Wells

I went to New York this summer to primarily see the Raphael exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the trip became something much bigger than I expected — in large part because of what I learned in Dr. Mont Allen’s classes at the University of Arizona School of Art, where I’m an Art History major.

Everywhere I went, I found myself recognizing works I’d studied in his lectures. At the Met, I virtually moved through millennia. Ancient Greek pottery, Roman sarcophagi, Renaissance altarpieces, and Rococo interiors. Seeing these pieces in person was a completely different experience than seeing them on a screen. The brushwork, the scale, the way light moves across real paint. None of it translates the same way in a photograph.

The Vermeers were particularly striking in their quiet, glowing stillness, and the Rubens were so full of energy they seemed alive. The Raphael exhibition itself was breathtaking, and it also featured works by Perugino and Da Vinci, which felt like an awesome bonus.

Some photos of Olivia's trip
Some photos of Olivia’s trip
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I also followed Dr. Allen’s recommendation to visit the Frick Collection, and I’m so glad I did. Walking into the Fragonard room stopped me cold. I’d studied it for so long, yet I never imagined a single room could make me want to cry from sheer beauty. I stood before The Progress of Love, and it was everything he’d described and so much more. A burst of inspiration I wasn’t expecting.

At MoMA, I finally saw Monet’s Water Lilies and Van Gogh’s Starry Night in person. The scale of the Monet panels was more impressive than I’d imagined, and seeing the actual texture of Van Gogh’s paint up close made the work feel weirdly personal.

What struck me most was realizing how much of the trip was shaped by what Dr. Allen taught me. He gave me the tools to look at art with intention, to notice the small details and understand the context. Walking through those galleries felt like stepping into his lectures, but with everything rendered in real life. I came home with a full camera roll and a much deeper appreciation for what his teaching gave me.

If you ever have the chance to take one of Dr. Allen’s classes, I’d strongly encourage it. He has a way of changing how you see the world and you’ll carry that with you long after the semester ends.

Mont Allen, Assistant Professor of Practice
Classes he teaches in fall:
• ART 160D1: Art & Society in the Western Tradition
• ARH 201:  Survey of Western Art: Prehistoric through Gothic
• ARH 413C: 16th-Century Italian Renaissance Art
Classes he teaches in spring:
• ART 160D1: Art & Society in the Western Tradition
• ARH 202: Survey of Western Art:  Renaissance through Modern
• ARH 315: Baroque & Rococo Art

Antebi Brings ‘Rebel Waters/Aguas Rebeldes’ to Florida

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

Rivers can be borders, lifelines and repositories of memory. For University of Arizona School of Art Associate Professor Nicole Antebi, they are all three.

Her upcoming exhibition “Rebel Waters / Aguas Rebeldes” in St. Augustine, Florida, uses animation and sculpture to explore the histories and changing landscapes of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo and the Santa Cruz River in Southern Arizona — a journey that will bring together Antebi and fellow faculty member Jennifer Saracino for a public conversation later this month.

The exhibition, presented by Crisp-Ellert Art Museum and Flagler College, features Antebi’s moving-image, sculptural and animation work exploring the history and transformation of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo and the Santa Cruz. An opening reception is scheduled for Friday evening, Sept. 4, with Antebi leading an exhibition walkthrough.

On Sept. 28, Antebi will join Saracino in Flagler’s Ringhaver Student Center for a public conversation about the exhibition and its themes.

For Antebi, whose work is deeply connected to the El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, region where she grew up, the Rio Grande become a way to examine environmental, social, political and economic forces that have shaped the borderlands for more than a century. The river is a vital water source for seven U.S. and Mexican states and becomes the border between Texas and the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.

Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz starts in the San Rafael Valley, flows south into Mexico, makes a U-turn, and then flows north past Green Valley, through the Tohono O’odham Nation, through Tucson and up past Marana.

Antebi moves between animation and sculpture, incorporating materials and imagery tied to the landscapes she explores. Her work has included found cottonwood from areas surrounding the Santa Cruz River and papel de amate, or Jonote bark paper, from Northern Puebla, Mexico. Text and mapping also recur throughout her time-based and sculptural works. The result is work that asks viewers to think about memory, place and the ways histories remain present.

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Antebi’s connection to the Crisp-Ellert exhibition goes back several years.

Julie Dickover, director of exhibitions and college collections at Crisp-Ellert, said Antebi first came onto the museum’s radar through connections within the experimental film and animation community. Patrick Moser, a professor at Flagler, had encountered Antebi’s work at a film festival, and the museum later included her work in its Finger Mullet Film Festival, an event created to highlight experimental video and animation.

“I’ve always liked Nicole’s work, and so last year we invited her to have an exhibition this fall,” Dickover said.

Saracino, an assistant professor of Art History, was a natural choice to help extend the exhibition’s conversation on Sept. 28. Her research focuses on Indigenous cartographic traditions of Central Mexico, cross-cultural interactions between mendicant friars and Indigenous communities, and the impact of these exchanges on the visual culture of early colonial Mexico.

“We make a small publication to go along with each exhibition, and I always commission an essay from an arts writer or art historian,” Dickover said. “I think both Nicole and I immediately identified Jen as a candidate to write the essay because there are so many overlapping themes in their work.”

Antebi has exhibited and screened her work throughout the United States and internationally, including at the Houston Center for Photography, Union Docs in Brooklyn, the Irish National College of Art and Design, Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, El Paso Museum of Art, the MexiCali Biennial and Tucson Museum of Art.

Earlier this year, she received a MacDowell Fellowship to work on an animated essay that explores “the hug” — both visually and textually as a gesture that “is as complex as it is political,” she said. Her work focused on four consequential hugs that took place in El Paso, Texas, from 2019 to 2025, “which demonstrate the restorative love of a border city perpetually traumatized by federal policies,” Antebi said.

In 2025, she was a visiting professor at the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico, and was named an Early Career Scholar Award recipient by the University of Arizona for her cross-cultural work that centers on animation as a form of community-engaged storytelling. Antebi is co-director of the Wonder Studio at Biosphere 2, which serves as an animation, data visualization and film production laboratory dedicated to developing solutions for environmental change.

Saracino, who previously taught in Flagler College’s Department of Visual Arts, also contributed an essay to the publication accompanying Antebi’s exhibition.

“Nicole and I have admired each other’s work since we first met as colleagues in fall 2021,“ Saracino said. “There are many intersections and connections between our work, and I’m so happy that Flagler College gave us the opportunity to talk more about them in front of an audience. It’s been a dream of ours to collaborate for a while.“

Saracino added: “I hope (students and the audience) will see how the study of historical maps continues to be crucial for understanding the formation of borders and borderlands today, how research can inform creative production that tackles contemporary issues, and how art history and the visual arts continue to influence and shape one another.“

Trio of UA-tied exhibitions in Sonora reflect realities of borderlands

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

The University of Arizona School of Art will have a strong presence this fall at the Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS) in Hermosillo, Mexico, where three interconnected exhibitions will examine the social, political, environmental and cultural landscapes that shape the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

School of Art Professor David Taylor’s “COMPLEX” will be accompanied by MFA alumna Mariel Miranda’s “El viento o el polvo, tal vez” (“The wind or the dust, perhaps”) and the group exhibition “Border as Network,” featuring work by nine graduate students who participated in Taylor’s fall 2024 field-study class.

Sponsors of the Hermosillo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS) include the University of Arizona’s Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry. Top photo: Professor Daylor Taylor flies a drone during his fall 2024 field-study class. (Photo by Lu Zheng)

With a collective opening reception on Sept. 4 at 7 p.m., the three shows will stay on view at MUSAS as part of FotoSeptiembre Sonora 2026 and through March 28, 2027, occupying the museum’s third-floor galleries.

Taylor’s “COMPLEX” — supported by a prestigious Graham Foundation grant — includes photography, video, audio, aerial imagery and installation as part of his ongoing investigation into border infrastructure, surveillance technologies and detention centers that have changed the region over the past two decades. Also featured is his multimedia installation “Panorama/Panopticon,” which focuses on Ambos Nogales and the increasingly monitored Sonoran Desert border region.  

“(The professor’s work) reveals the ways in which the logics of surveillance, containment and detention shape one another,” said curatorial contributor Ila N. Sharen, and simultaneously exposes the visible and invisible infrastructures that influence movement, perception and power.

Professor David Taylor’s “COMPLEX” includes photographs of the vast system of privately operated prisons that incarcerate thousands of migrants and refugees under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Miranda received her MFA in Studio Art in 2023. Her exhibition examines industrial ecosystems, labor and extractive economies through the experiences of people living and working in Tijuana’s Barrio Cumbres. Through installation, sculpture, video and speculative forms of inquiry, “El viento o el polvo, tal vez” highlights alternative futures emerging from the border region.

“(Her exhibition explores) alternative rhythms and subversive operations in which the working-class imagines, constructs and enables new horizons for the future,” curator Inari Reséndiz says.

Miranda’s similar 2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition installation, “The dust, or the wind, perhaps,” presented a speculative fiction installation invoking radical utopias founded in a Science Fiction workshop that she co-hosted with her brother, neighbors and friends in her Tijuana, Mexico, barrio.

Mariel Miranda (MFA ’23, Studio Art), with her 2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition installation.

The third exhibition, “Border as Network,” features current School of Art MFA students Beihua Guo and Porter McDonald and Humanities graduate student Lu Zheng, as well as recent MFA graduates Andrés Caballero, Benjamin Davis, Maya Jackson, Alexis Joy Hagestad, Semoria F. Mosley and Camille Trautman. The nine traveled throughout Arizona and Sonora during the fall 2024 semester.

Their research took them to religious sites, Indigenous lands, manufacturing facilities, farms, threatened ecosystems, agricultural enterprises and resource-extraction zones. They followed the Tucson-Nogales-Hermosillo corridor, viewing it as a regional network whose local conditions illuminate broader global dynamics and affect everyday life.

“The resulting works challenge simplified narratives of the border and instead reveal a landscape defined by continuity, complexity and interdependence” the museum said in a news release.

The students’ work also reflects Gloria Anzaldúa’s view of the borderlands as a place that is geographic, psychological and spiritual. Anzaldúa, who died in 2004, was an American philosopher and scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural theory and queer theory.

Signs at border

Professor David Taylor’s fall 2024 field-study class created border signs in different languages with the message:“Keep your passport | Guard your papers | Save your identity.” (Photo by Colin Blakely)

Mosley, a social justice-oriented photojournalist and now a School of Art adjunct instructor, said she spent the semester “trying to understand the desert from a spiritual point of view — how it’s continuously rebirthing itself and going through these renewal cycles.”

Jackson, a landscape-based, conceptual photographer, said it “would be powerful, even on a community level, for more people to have the experiences we had” to better grasp the borderlands’ beauty and challenges.

She and her fellow graduate students held a previous “Border as Network” exhibition in Tucson’s Pidgin Palace Arts in August 2025. Taylor also presented “COMPLEX” at Pidgin Palace in 2024.

As a whole, the three Hermosillo exhibitions bring together Taylor, Miranda and emerging artists from the School of Art to examine a region shaped by movement, labor, technology, migration, commerce and the environment.

Current graduate student Beihua Guo took this image of the U.S.-Mexico border during the fall 2024 field-study class.

For Taylor and his students, the exhibitions are an extension of research conducted across the borderlands. For exhibition visitors, they offer different perspectives on a region that is often reduced to a political boundary but is, in practice, much more interconnected.

“I grew up in Tucson and have been to a lot of these places before, but I was really excited to take the class because I wanted to see them through a new lens … and really understand the systems that make up the border,” McDonald said.

Taylor has described his broader borderlands work and semi-annual field class as an effort to ensure that people’s experiences do not disappear.

“(It’s) about unflattening the narratives of the U.S.-Mexico border and the Sonoran Desert borderlands,” he said.

More info

• Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS) directions
• 2026 FotoSeptiembre Sonora

Eight join School of Art faculty, staff

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

As the 2026-27 school year begins, the University of Arizona School of Art welcomes director Jeff Beekman and seven other new faculty and staff members:

  • Andrea Allen, Assistant Professor
  • Kerri Conlon, Assistant Professor
  • Isabella Shey Robbins, Assistant Professor
  • Pete Froslie, Professor
  • Nicole Dvorak, Academic Advisor
  • Andrew Schroeder, Technician
  • Bryan Cormac Peel, Academic Advisor

Here’s a look at the school’s new faces.

Jeff Beekman

Jeff Beekman

Position: Director, School of Art; Professor, Photography, Video & Imaging

Bio:  Beekman took over as director of the School of Art on July 1, bringing nationally recognized leadership as the school nears its centennial in 2027. He came to the U of A from Florida State University, where he chaired the Department of Art since 2023 and held other roles since 2013, including associate chair and director of Foundations and BA programs. As a community steward, he received an Emerging Arts Administrators Fellowship by the National Council of Arts Administrators. Previously, Beekman taught at the University of Oklahoma, Georgia Southern University and the University of New Mexico-Gallup. He received his BFA from the University of Florida and his MFA from the University of New Mexico. As an artist, he has focused his work “on our relationship with the landscapes we occupy,” including lens-based projects in recent years. He has exhibited broadly across the U.S. and internationally at venues in New Zealand, Australia, China, South Korea, Hungary, England, Ecuador, Italy and Vietnam. In his work, Beekman has explored human and environmental trauma, including the “Florida Coastline Project” and the “Battlefield Project,” which photographically explores conflict sites in the U.S. Civil War with archival photos of soldiers projected upon the battlefields where they fought and fell.

Quote: “I have a deep love for the American West. Joining a school the caliber of the University of Arizona and working with a faculty as dynamic and well-respected as those in the School of Art is truly exciting.”— Jeff Beekman

Website and Instagram: https://jeffbeekman.wixsite.com/home and @jeffbeekman

Andrea Allen

Andrea Allen

Position: Assistant Professor, Art & Visual Culture Education

Bio: Allen comes from Michigan State University, where she was an assistant professor of Art Education and the undergraduate program coordinator. She is an interdisciplinary artist-educator and scholar specializing in social justice art teaching, identity development, and decolonial methodologies in visual arts education and research. Her scholarship has been published in leading art education journals, including Studies in Art Education and the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. She has presented her work at numerous state and national conferences and serves as program chair for the Inquiry in Visual and Performing Arts Education Special Interest Group within the American Educational Research Association. Allen has over a decade of teaching experience spanning community arts centers, museums, and K-16 classrooms across Texas, New York, Japan and New Zealand. She earned her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Art Education from the University of Houston in 2023, where she also completed her MEd and BA in Broadcast Journalism.

Quote: “In my teaching, research and artmaking, I draw from the concept of nepantla, a Nahuatl term meaning ‘the place in the middle,’ as articulated by poet-activist Gloria Anzaldúa. From nepantla, my identities as Mexican, Filipino, American, Woman, Artist, Scholar and Teacher interact to challenge my internalized beliefs about what it means to embody these roles.” — Andrea Allen

Website and Instagram: andreaeallen.com and @teetasdoodles

Kerri Conlon

Kerri Conlon

Position: Assistant Professor, 3D & Extended Media

Bio: Conlon’s large-scale sculptural installations fuse the ornamental with the structural to explore the intersections of construction, both architectural and cultural, investigating how identity and space are shaped by structures that are at once physical and ideological. 

She received her MFA in Sculpture from the Yale School of Art in 2019 and her BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009. She has exhibited nationally, with recent solo exhibitions including Permission Structures at Cal Poly University Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA and Upholding at Bass and Reiner in San Francisco, CA. Her work has also been shown in New York, NY; Providence, RI; and Ferguson, MO. She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Lighthouse Works Fellowship (2023) and the Fannie B. Pardee Prize for Excellence in Sculpture (2019).  

Conlon was previously a Lecturer in the Art and Art History Department at Stanford University. She is the co-founder of Hunt Projects, a shared studio space in San Francisco that provides artists with private studios and a communal wood and metal shop for material exploration and dialogue. She has worked in academic shop spaces since 2007, teaching students the conceptual and technical skills necessary to translate ideas into physical form.

Quote: I believe that making is a way of knowing and fosters agency in students through hands-on engagement with materials and processes.” — Kerri Conlon

Website and Instagram: kerriconlon.com and @kerriconlonstudio

Isabella Shey Robbins

Isabella Shey Robbins

Position: Assistant Professor, Art History

Bio: Robbins is a Diné scholar, curator and educator from Cameron, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. She received her PhD in the History of Art and American Studies departments at Yale University in May 2026. Her dissertation, “Relationality and Being: Indigeneity, Space and Transit in Global Contemporary Art,” considers how artists engage with their own communities and others within and across the settler states of the U.S. and Australia.Guiding her research are questions related to definitions of Indigeneity, and the intersections of mobility, diaspora, and global Indigeneity.

She recently completed the second and final year of her prestigious Chester Dale Fellowship in Washington, D.C., with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts — the National Gallery of Art’s world-renowned research institute. Robbins has held curatorial positions at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, and the Cantor Arts Center, and has taught contemporary art history and theory courses at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Robbins earned a BA in Art History from Stanford University and an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University. She serves as treasurer of the Diné Studies Association.

Quote: “(My) dissertation more broadly considers the meaningful engagements of specific places and their peoples, symbols of Indianness, and the repetition of cultural and aesthetic practices by artists.”

Instagram: @isabella.shey

Pete Froslie

Pete Froslie

Position: Professor, Photography, Video & Imaging; associate dean for research and graduate studies, College of Fine Arts

Bio: Froslie, whose research focuses on the intersection of human-made technological systems, art and culture, is also the new associate director of AI and the Arts within the University of Arizona’s Office of Responsible AI. He has long been fascinated with the relationship between global political and economic structures and emerging issues of climate and environmental change. He joins the U of A from the University of Oklahoma, where he was associate dean for technology and grants of the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts, the Director of the School of Visual Arts, and Professor of Art, Technology and Culture.

He received his Master of Fine Arts from the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art (MassArt) and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada-Reno. As part of his art practice, Froslie’s recent work includes three expeditions to the Arctic Circle in the Svalbard archipelago in 2017, 2019, and 2024. 

Quote: “You can feel the energy around the arts at the University of Arizona. The Arizona Arts community engages urgent environmental and social questions, and there’s a genuine commitment to interdisciplinary work.” — Pete Froslie

Website and Instagram: froslie.net and @petefroslie

Nicole Dvorak

Nicole Dvorak

Position: Undergraduate academic advisor

Bio: Dvorak previously was an academic advisor at Pima Community College in Tucson and Columbia College in Denver. Before that, she taught World History and Reading in the Orange County Public Schools District in Apopka, Florida. She received her bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and Teaching from the University of Central Florida. Nicole was born outside of Chicago, but moved to Orlando, Florida, when she was in the third grade.

Quote: “I consider teaching and academic advising to be closely related. There are many transferable skills of teaching that carry into the academic advising world, such as student mentoring and counseling in both academic and personal capacities, using data to drive practices, and helping students navigate their educational journeys. Both careers are rewarding as my main goal is helping students be successful and achieve their goals.”

Instagram: @nicole_dvorak

Andrew Schroeder

Andrew Schroeder

Position: Technician for Print, Publishing and Book Arts

Background: Schroeder grew up in Nebraska and received his BFA in Printmaking from the University of Nebraska, before getting his MFA in Printmaking and Photography from the University of Minnesota. Initially torn between art, geography and sociology, he studied printmaking at Nebraska under Karen Kunc, “who showed me that visual art could be the umbrella under which I could explore all three,” he said. For the last three years, he was the College of Fine Arts photography lab manager at the University of New Mexico. Among his previous roles, he was a program coordinator at the University of Arizona Faculty Center and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Quote: “I’m thrilled to join the School of Art because this role lets me combine my passion for technical practice with my love of typography and printmaking. I want to dive into the extensive and incredibly diverse collection of wooden and metal type in the letterpress area, ensuring students and faculty can fully leverage it while also researching the typographic history of these objects. I’m also eager to expand our workflows using the Risograph, especially developing methods for reproducing photographs via halftones on the machine … something I’m excited to learn and share with the community. … My approach to this role is about facilitating art-making and helping students produce their best work.”

Website and Instagram: andrewschroeder.net and @eigengrau_photo

VASE series marks 20th season with 4 artists, scholars

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

Celebrating its 20th season, the University of Arizona School of Art’s Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowment (VASE) lecture series will feature Dario Robleto, Cara Romero, Ana María León and Jorge Lucero in 2026-27.

The free, hour-long VASE presentations will be held at the Center for Creative Photography auditorium, 1030 N. Olive Road.

“VASE creates a space of encounter where artists, architects and scholars meet our students in the fertile ground between disciplines,” Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi said.

Dario Robleto

Dario Robleto
  • Date: Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
  • Lecture title: “Ancient Beacons Long for Notice”

Robleto will discuss his interdisciplinary approach to crafting and conveying messages of emotion and identity into the cosmos, a kind of “humanities off-planet.” He is an American artist, writer and filmmaker based in Houston. His work has been exhibited widely and held in prominent collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Menil Collection and the National Gallery of Art. “Ancient Beacons Long for Notice” also is a film by Robleto — the third installment in a trilogy exploring the history and legacy of the Golden Record, a cosmic time capsule attached to NASA’s Voyager I and II space probes.

Cara Romero

Cara Romero
  • Date: Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
  • Lecture title: “Photography as Praxis”

Renowned artist/photographer Cara Romero will give a career-spanning talk about the making of a contemporary Native artist, from her training at the Institute of American Indian Arts to founding the Cara Romero Gallery and Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero’s work — held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA — moves fluidly between fine art, documentary and cinematic staged photography, grounded in Chemehuevi epistemology, traditional ecological knowledge, and Indigenous futurism.

Ana María León

Ana María León
  • Date: Thursday, Feb. 25, 2027, 5:30 p.m.
  • Lecture title: “Spatial Solidarities at Dawson Island, 1889 & 1973”

León is an associate professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her newest book is titled “Spatial Solidarities: Architecture and Resistance in 1970s.” She will talk about Chile’s Dawson Island, the site of a detention and torture center for political prisoners of the Pinochet dictatorship, which violently took over the country in 1973. León will examine the similarities between the settler colonial Chilean state at the end of the 19th century and the dictatorship of the late 20th century, as well as spatial forms of solidarity mobilized by the individuals imprisoned by the regime to resist its violence and reclaim their agency. Her talk is co-sponsored by the College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture.

Jorge Lucero

Jorge Lucero
  • Date: Thursday, March 25, 2027, 5:30 p.m.
  • Lecture title: “No Wasted Moves: On the Pliability of Teaching as a Creative Practice”

The Chicago artist and professor will expand on the pliability of a fully integrated teaching and creative practice. Showcasing major projects from the last 25 years, Lucero aims to present the possibility that conceptual art permissions open a path for rethinking how we test the expressive and inquiry potential of everyday institutions and materials we come in contact with. Lucero is a professor of Art Education in the School of Art & Design and a senior associate dean at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to working in higher education, he served as a high school art teacher at the Chicago Public School District.

About VASE

The School of Art focuses on bringing diverse artists and scholars from around the world to our campus. These artists and scholars bring their own unique influences to the program by engaging with community members, students, and faculty through salons, lectures and exhibitions.

The VASE series is made possible by the School of Art Advisory Board Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowment, the National Endowment for the Arts, the School of Art, the College of Fine Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence, the Center for Creative Photography and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Tucson.

Go to vase.art.arizona.edu for more details about the artists and scholars.

Foster Gluck earns Fulbright Scholar award in Spain

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

Dr. Geneva Foster Gluck, a School of Art adjunct instructor and alumna, has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award along with six other University of Arizona faculty members for the 2026-27 academic year.

Foster Gluck will be based in Spain’s Catalonia region from September to May to develop a creative research project that combines energy humanities with applied art, theater and scenography as tools for promoting behavioral change related to climate change.

As part of the Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Award, she’ll work with environmental scientist Maria Heras at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona on a series of immersive art and educational encounters that coalesce research questions and findings unique to Spain’s progressive energy, as well as the entangled legacies of colonialism, energy systems and cultural transformation.

Dr. Geneva Foster Gluck in “Magnetic Chamber” (2022)

“This was my first (Fulbright) application … and I really look forward to working with Maria and with all the great energy and sustainability projects that are taking place in Spain,” Foster Gluck said. “By taking an interdisciplinary approach to energy humanities, theater and design, my research contributes insights into our daily interactions with energy, diversifies perceptions of energy and devises actions for generative possibilities on a warming planet in the form of public-facing, immersive and interactive experiences.”

She has explored similar environmental themes specific to Tucson and the borderlands in projects such as her site-specific performance “Inheriting the Void” (2026), at the base of Tumamoc Hill, and “Interactive Batteries” (2024) in the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” exhibition at the school’s Joseph Gross Gallery.

U of A has long Fulbright history

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. State Department’s flagship cultural exchange program that supports U.S. scholars conducting research or teaching abroad for up to a year. Since 1954, more than 300 Fulbright Scholars have represented the University of Arizona at institutions around the world, including seven in 2026-27 and seven in 2025-26, when U of A was named a top Fulbright producer and tied for fourth in the nation.

Since 2024, Foster Gluck has taught “Career Development for Artists” at the School of Art, where she received her BFA in 1999.

“I really enjoy teaching … and find it very satisfying to think about how to have sustainable arts practices, while expanding creative culture, such as art-as-research and community engagement,” she said. “Each semester is very different as each cohort of students brings new questions and perspectives on making a living as an artist.”

During her time in Spain, Foster Gluck will continue to teach her career development class online.

“I look forward to sharing some of what I learn about how Spain supports artists, its creative culture and economies,” she said. “The online format will also give me more time to work one-on-one with students and to support their unique visions and aims.”

Immersive theater, circus skills part of BFA years

During her undergraduate time at U of A, Gluck became a core member of Tucson-based Flam Chen Pyrotechnic Theatre, where she was responsible for introducing aerial circus skills and interactive sculpture into the company’s performance repertoire. Flam Chen performed at New York City and Philadelphia Fringe Festivals in 2001 and 2002.

After Gluck earned her M.A. in Scenography at the University of London in 2003, she went on to work with some of the UK’s most successful contemporary and immersive theater companies, including Fevered Sleep (2003), Marisa Carnesky (2004), and SHUNT (2005), before establishing her own company, Sugar Beast Circus, in 2007. The circus received professional acclaim, including the Jeunes Talents Cirque Award (2008), a residency at The Roadhouse (2010), a Circus Futures award (2011) and a premiere at the prestigious London International Mime Festival (2012).

“Inheriting the Void” (2026)
“Inheriting the Void” (2026)
“Inheriting the Void” (2026)
“Inheriting the Void” (2026)
“Magnetic Chamber” (2022)
“Magnetic Chamber” (2022)
“Magnetic Chamber” (2022)
“Magnetic Chamber” (2022)
“Interactive Batteries” (2024)
“Interactive Batteries” (2024)
“Battery Maker Museum” (2020)
“Battery Maker Museum” (2020)
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“My work centers on immersive event-production, creative research, and material storytelling to explore a range of topics and experiences often grounded in decolonizing, feminist, and ecological approaches,” Gluck said. “I use a range of creative practices including performance, prop-making, video and sound installation to explore the connections between ways of knowing, environment and embodied experience.”

In 2020, Gluck completed a practice-led PhD program at Arizona State University titled, “Performing the Electrical or My Heart is an Electromagnetic Chamber: Scenographies of Power, Ecology and Speculative Practice.” Her research integrated performance studies, spatial theory and energy humanities to consider the ways that new knowledge is created and shared through artist led projects.

Now based in Tucson, Gluck is co-founder of Snakebite Creation Space, a platform for supporting performance, installation and process-based work in Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico. Her other shows included “Magnetic Chamber” (2022) at Pidgin Palace Arts, and “Battery Maker Museum” (2020), a month-long installation and nomadic storytelling project at the MSA Annex in west downtown.

Tumamoc project involves community

In early April, Gluck presented “Inheriting the Void,” a performance-installation and video essay, at the base of Tumamoc Hill. Loosely based on Gluck’s experience caring for her mother during her rapid onset of dementia, as well as larger themes of the climate crisis and mental health, the performance invited community members to scan a QR code on their phones for a 15-minute audiovisual story, using headphones.

She invited visitors to witness a speculative interaction between a bear and a ventriloquist that asks: “On whose behalf do we speak? What is the relationship between memory and knowledge? And who or what speaks through our actions?”

“I thought it was going to be much more of a traditional performance, but I was really pleased with the way the ‘narrative’ divided across the live installation, the site and the video essays,” she said. “I have used phone technologies before for site-specific and nomadic storytelling, but this was a little different, and the ways that the audience engaged with the work was really fun to see.”

The event was made possible by a MOCA Tucson Night Bloom Award and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Internal support is available for prospective Fulbright Scholar and Specialist applicants. For more information, contact Danielle Barefoot, dbarefoot@arizona.edu, associate for International Research Development and the university’s Fulbright Scholar liaison.

Jeff Beekman takes reins at School of Art

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

Jeff Beekman is the new director of the University of Arizona School of Art, bringing nationally recognized leadership, “energy” and a “collaborative spirit” to the school as it nears its centennial.

Coming from Florida State University, Beekman chaired the Department of Art in Tallahassee since 2023 and held other leadership roles since 2013, including associate chair and director of Foundations and BA programs. Previously, he taught at the University of Oklahoma, Georgia Southern University and the University of New Mexico-Gallup. 

Jeff Beekman

“I am truly delighted to welcome Jeff to the University of Arizona School of Art. Jeff leads with care, curiosity, and a deep respect for artists and educators, and I know he will be a wonderful steward of this community,” said Hasan Elahi, dean of the College of Fine Arts and Arizona Arts.

“His energy, generosity and collaborative spirit make this an exciting moment for the School of Art,” said Elahi, who named Beekman as the next director on March 24, effective July 1.

Awards and accolades

As a community steward, Beekman received an Emerging Arts Administrators Fellowship by the National Council of Arts Administrators in 2023, in addition to being named a Leadership Award finalist at FSU for “those who have made a significant impact on the Tallahassee community.”

He received his BFA from the University of Florida in 2000 and his MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2005.

As an artist, Beekman has focused his work “on our relationship with the landscapes we occupy,” including lens-based projects in recent years.

He has exhibited broadly across the U.S. and internationally at venues in New Zealand, Australia, China, South Korea, Hungary, England, Ecuador, Italy and Vietnam.

“While I am proud of my time at FSU and all that we have accomplished together, I have a deep love for the American West,” Beekman said. “Joining a school the caliber of the University of Arizona and working with a faculty as dynamic and well-respected as those in the School of Art is truly exciting.”

School founded in 1927

Founded in 1927, the University of Arizona School of Art offers nationally ranked programs — including in Photography, Video and Imaging (PVI), rated No. 3 by U.S. News & World Report.

Undergraduate and graduate degrees include Art History; Art and Visual Culture Education; Design Arts and Practices; and Studio Art in 2D Studies; 3D & Extended Media; Illustration, Design and Animation; and PVI.

As director, Beekman is overseeing 30 full-time faculty and 14 adjunct faculty — including those who have earned Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, exhibited at major biennales and published field-defining research — in addition to an acclaimed alumni base that shapes creative industries around the world.

“I look forward to building on my experience as an artist and administrator to connect people, ideas and resources,” Beekman said, “and to work collaboratively with students and others across the school, college, university and community to expand the future horizons of an already thriving School of Art.”

He succeeds Karen Zimmermann, interim director, and Colin Blakely, who left as director after 10 years to become associate provost at the Rhode Island School of Design in July 2025.

“I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Karen for her thoughtful and steady leadership as interim director, and to the search committee for the time, care, and commitment they brought to this process,” Elahi said. “Their collective work has positioned the School of Art exceptionally well for its next chapter.”

Image from Jeff Beekman’s “Battlefield Project.”

How Beekman helped FSU

As chair at FSU, Beekman worked to add additional faculty lines and over $1 million in facility repairs and upgrades.

He worked with donors to fundraise over $1.2 million for Studio Arts, doubling its previous endowment, to support a named professorship, increase student scholarships and awards, expand outreach to magnet high schools and state two-year colleges, and assist experiential learning opportunities and student travel.

In addition, Beekman expanded support for co-taught courses and collaborations between disciplines within Studio Art, as well between Studio Art and Art Education, Art Therapy, Dance, Design, Music, Physics, and FSU’s Innovation Hub.

A list of recent external collaborators include CERN, the Florida Department of Community Corrections, and the Jacksonville Zoo, where FSU students designed interactive enrichment toys for animals.

“Overcoming institutional silos can be difficult, but when done well it opens innumerable opportunities for our students and faculty and facilitates a culture of collaboration, creativity and inclusion within the department and beyond,” he said.

Art explores our relationships with landscapes

In his personal artwork, Beekman explores human and environmental trauma, including the “Florida Coastline Project” and the “Battlefield Project,” which photographically explores conflict sites in the U.S. Civil War with archival photos of soldiers projected upon the battlefields where they fought and fell.

Current exhibitions those at the Centro Cultural Benjamin Carrión (Quito, Ecuador) and Middlebury College (Vermont), where he is exhibiting alongside colleagues in the Eco.Echo Art Collective.

Also, Beekman has a curatorial practice, which he began while coordinating the University of New Mexico-Gallup Ingham Chapman Gallery. He counts his most notable exhibition as 2017’s “Broken Ground: New Directions in Land Art” at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts.

“Whether exploring the enduring impacts of climate changes on local communities, the Land Arts movement as a catalyst for contemporary art making, or the ethics behind the memorialization of sites of violence, the work I make consistently examines the relationships between land, memory and human activity,” he said.

San Antonio Museum of Art appoints alumna Brindza as curator

Posted on by Michael Chesnick

School of Art alumna Christine Crame Brindza has been named Curator of American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art. She starts her new role on July 27.

Brindza received her PhD in Art History and Education from the University of Arizona in 2025.

She has worked the last 14 years at the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block as Senior Curator and Curator, where she’s been a pioneer in community-based curation with a specialty in art of the West and Indigenous art.

Her work has earned major national recognition, including the Arthur H. Wolf Impact Award (2024) and the American Alliance of Museums Impact Award (2025).

“Christine’s leadership has transformed how museums engage with artists, communities and the histories of American art,” said Emily B. Neff, The Kelso Director at At the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), in an ArtDaily story.

At SAMA, Brindza will curate its American art collection, which spans the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century and includes portraits, landscape and still-life painting, prints and drawings, decorative arts, and marble and bronze sculpture. She also will oversee SAMA’s Texas collection and European collection, and work collaboratively with the Latin American art and contemporary art curators.

“I am honored to join the San Antonio Museum of Art and to contribute to an institution with such a dynamic commitment to cultural dialogue,” Brindza said.

🔗 Read the full ArtDaily story.

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