Art and Dialogue: San Francisco with Michelle White

The Wattis and Artadia co-present an online lecture by Michelle White, Senior Curator at The Menil Collection in Houston.

In her talk, White reflects on questions about the role of institutions in facilitating new work and providing platforms for research, by pulling from the Menil’s history of artist projects stemming from the 1969 project with Andy Warhol, Raid the Icebox. She discusses her exhibitions with contemporary artists that have come out of the collection and archives of the museum’s unique holdings of historical materials and works of art, including recent exhibitions with Allora & Calzadilla, Mona Hatoum and Leslie Hewitt.

Michelle White is Senior Curator at the Menil Collection, where she has organized the exhibitions, Allora & Calzadilla: Specters of Noon, Lessons from Below: Otabenga Jones and Associates, Roni Horn: When I Breathe, I Draw, Leaps into the Void: Documents of Nouveau Realist Performance, Between Land and Sea: Artists of the Coenties Slip, Barnett Newman: the Late Work, Mona Hatoum: Terra Infirma and Vija Celmins: Death and Disaster, 1964—1966. She was the co-curator of the first retrospective of the drawings of Richard Serra that opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and organized the retrospective drawing exhibition of works on paper by Lee Bontecou for the Menil and the Princeton University Art Museum. She has worked with Claes Oldenburg on a publication and exhibition of the Strange Eggs, and has organized commissions for the Menil with artists Dario Robleto, Leslie Hewitt and Bradford Young. She is currently preparing exhibition on the work of Niki de Saint Phalle and Chryssa. She received her B.A. at the University of California, San Diego and her M.A. in Art History from Tufts University, and has held positions at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

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Artadia’s Art & Dialogue invites curators from across the United States, who are experts in their field, to deeply engage with each Award city through a series of virtual studio visits with local Awardees and public programs, co-hosted with local partner organizations.

About California College of the Arts

Located at the center of innovation and technology in the San Francisco Bay Area, California College of the Arts is home to a world-renowned faculty of practicing artists and entrepreneurs, and a diverse community of makers that are boldly reimagining the world. Offering 22 undergraduate and 11 graduate programs in fine arts, architecture, design, and writing, CCA’s creative culture is built around the ideals of interdisciplinary collaboration, sustainability, and community engagement.

California College of the Arts campuses are located in Huichin and Yelamu, also known as Oakland and San Francisco, respectively, on the unceded territories of Chochenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, who have continuously lived upon this land since time immemorial. We recognize the historic discrimination and violence inflicted upon Indigenous peoples in California and the Americas, including their forced removal from ancestral lands, and the deliberate and systematic destruction of their communities and culture. CCA honors Indigenous peoples—past, present, and future—here and around the world, and we wish to pay respect to local elders, including those of the lands from which you are joining us virtually today. If you are unsure of who's land you are currently residing upon, we encourage you to visit native-land.ca.