The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) is proud to announce the three local artists chosen for the Great Rivers Biennial 2012. Designed to recognize artistic talent in the greater St. Louis metro area, the Great Rivers Biennial program, funded generously by the Gateway Foundation, awards each selected artist $20,000 and a major exhibition in CAM’s Main Galleries during the summer of 2012. The three artists chosen for the Great Rivers Biennial 2012 are David Johnson, Asma Kazmi, and Mel von Trad. The exhibition will open at CAM on May 11, 2012, and run through August 12, 2012.

GREAT RIVERS BIENNIAL 2012 WINNERS

David Johnson is an artist and educator based in St. Louis, MO. He received an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 and earned his BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Photography from Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, in 2005. His current research involves the relationship between the built environment and its inhabitants. By focusing on small mundane objects and the quality of lighting, his abstracted photographs of office spaces and domestic environments highlight the strained relationship between self and place. Currently, Johnson is an Adjunct Lecturer at Saint Louis University and is also a founding member of the RAD LAB studio space in downtown St. Louis. His photographs have been exhibited nationally, including at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, Los Caminos, and Boots Contemporary Arts Space, all in St. Louis; La Esquina, Kansas City, MO; Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR; and Maps Contemporary Art Space, Belleville, IL.

Asma Kazmi is a performance artist and sculptor born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, and currently based in St. Louis, MO. She received an M.F.A. in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, and a B.F.A. in Sculpture and Film/Video from the Massachussetts College of Art in 2002. Kazmi approaches her practice from a post- installation-/object-centric position, which allows her to create transdisciplinary, relational works where people, media, and objects come together. Kazmi is currently a part-time lecturer at the Kansas City Art Institute. She is the recipient of the Rocket Grant, Charlotte Street Foundation and the Spencer Museum of Art at Kansas University; the At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago Award, University of Illinois at Chicago; and the Creative Stimulus Award, Critical Mass for the Visual Arts, St. Louis. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as H&R Block Space and Grand Arts, both in Kansas City, MO; University of Missouri and Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis; The Guild Gallery, New York; Galerie Sans Titre, Brussels, Belgium; Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago; and the Boston Underground Film Festival and the MassArt Film Society in Boston, MA.

Mel von Trad is a sculptor and installation artist born and raised in St. Louis, MO. Developing abstract relationships with found materials, wood, steel, and plaster, von Trad redrafts the art object. Her arrangements function as objects of study, performing a spatial investigation into the visual nuances of the objective and non-objective, domesticity, and the history of classical modernism. Studying sculpture and photography, von Trad received her B.A. of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California in 2009. She has presented her work at Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, Pig Slop, and 1948 Cherokee, all in St. Louis; and at Under the Bridge Gallery and H. Kazan Gallery in Los Angeles.

Three distinguished jurors selected the three artists from more than 120 submissions representing a wide range of media including drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, video, and new media. The jurors for the Great Rivers Biennial 2012 are Lisa Dorin, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago; Jeffrey Grove, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art; and Lydia Yee, Curator, Barbican Art Gallery, London.

The Great Rivers Biennial Visual Arts Awards Program, established in 2003, is a collaboration between the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Gateway Foundation, with a mission to strengthen and support the local artists of St. Louis. The goal of this program is to identify talented emerging and mid-career local artists, provide them with financial assistance, raise the visibility of their work in both the Midwest and national arts communities, and provide them with the professional support of visiting critics, curators, and dealers.

The Great Rivers Biennial is generously supported by the Gateway Foundation. To date, the Contemporary, with the Gateway Foundation’s financial support, has given $290,000 directly to local artists.

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) announced today that Director Paul Ha has been selected as the new Director of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) List Center for the Visual Arts in Cambridge, MA. Ha is expected to begin his new position on December 1, 2011.

“What an honor it is for Paul to have been chosen to lead the List Center at MIT,” said David Obedin, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Board Chairman. “For the past nine years, Paul has taken the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis to a new level of excellence and international prominence. We will miss his vision and leadership, but wish him well in this exciting new opportunity.”

Ha arrived in St. Louis in 2002 to oversee the construction and opening in September 2003 of the organization’s new facility designed by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture. Ha quickly positioned CAM as a leader in the field of contemporary art, garnering national and international recognition for its exhibitions. He also initiated programs to appeal to broader audiences in the St. Louis community. His major accomplishments for CAM include raising an aggregate of over $40 million and initiating and creating a $5 million endowment, the institution’s first. During Ha’s tenure, a number of artists received their first major museum exhibition at CAM including Laylah Ali, Lutz Bacher, Yun-Fei Ji, David Noonan, Alexander Ross, Aida Ruilova, Gedi Sibony, and Carey Young. Other artists exhibited include Polly Apfelbaum, Richard Artschwager, Slater Bradley, Jim Hodges, Maya Lin, Yoshitomo Nara, William Pope. L, and Cindy Sherman among others. Under Ha’s leadership, CAM produced 92 exhibitions and brought 223 artists to St. Louis since opening its doors in 2003.

“It was an incredible privilege to be the inaugural Director of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis,” said Ha. “I am thankful to those who brought me here and introduced me to a terrific city, and I am grateful to the tremendous staff members who helped build this institution. I am also thankful to the active board I was fortunate to have the support of, and of course all the extraordinary artists I was privileged to exhibit and support. I leave this organization knowing that I am leaving an institution that is fiscally sound, staffed by incredibly talented and dedicated individuals, and has tremendous leadership from committed board members. CAM is respected and loved by the community. My family and I are thankful to the St. Louis community and to those who reached out and welcomed us. We have made lifelong friends here.”

“Having been involved from the beginning with the predecessor institutions of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, I can say how rewarding it has been to watch the organization’s development over the last nine years under Paul’s leadership,” said Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Founder of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. “He has brought a broad spectrum of contemporary art to St. Louis and an increasingly widely involved community. It has been a pleasure for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis to share a courtyard and many interests and programs.”
The List Center for the Visual Arts is known internationally and nationally for its cutting edge exhibitions and its oversight of MIT’s world-class public art collection. “What excites me about the List is that the arts at MIT are rooted in experimentation, and the List excels at that mandate,” said Ha. “My goal is to try to build on the List’s strong reputation in the field while also expanding its role in the lives of students and the greater MIT community. Just as the MIT Museum explores the foundations and frontiers of science and technology, the List Center for the Visual Arts explores the foundations and frontiers of the visual arts, being a laboratory for forward thinking and experimentation for the visual art world.”

“In Paul, the List is gaining a well respected and proven arts leader that has earned the admiration of his staff, the communities in which he has lived and worked, as well as the international art community,” said Philip S. Khoury, Associate Provost and Ford International Professor of History who oversees the List Center for the Visual Arts. “We are excited that he is joining MIT and look forward to collaborating on ways we can further solidify the List’s standing among students, faculty, visitors, and the international arts community.”

A search committee has been formed to name Ha’s replacement. Specific plans for the transition will be announced in the coming weeks.

Meet a New CAM Staff Member continues with Tiffany Sutton, our new Membership and Visitor Services Coordinator.  Tiffany has been part of the CAM team for a while serving as a Gallery Assistant, but we are happy to have her as a full-time staff member.  Welcome Tiffany!

Tiffany coordinates all day-to-day operations of the Visitor Services department to ensure a positive visitor experience. She is the primary staffer at the Visitor Services desk and is responsible for greeting visitors, providing them with information about exhibitions and programs, and processing admissions, shop and membership sales. She is the direct supervisor and trainer of all part-time front line staff and is responsible for all scheduling and work assignments to ensure the galleries are staffed appropriately, staff provide high quality customer service, and all daily tasks are completed. She is responsible for stocking the shop and café inventory and ensuring that all public spaces are clean and tidy at all times. She provides guided tours to visitors and prospective rental clients and ensures that printed materials and iPads are available to visitors at all times. She assists with the collection and entering of data from visitors and coordinates onsite membership sales activities to ensure department goals are met. She works closely with the Director of Finance and Administration to close out daily registers and manage accurate shop sales inventory records.

Fun Facts about Tiffany:

• I love raking the courtyard sand
• I’m a photographer and I photograph food a lot!
• I (sadly) don’t own any Tiffany jewelry
• I can adjust your glasses
• My nickname if tif-tif

Today we introduce you to Jessica Miller, our new Grants and Sponsorships Manager, who joined CAM in early August.

Jessica manages all institutional giving activities, including sponsorships, grants, and in-kind gifts from foundations, corporations, and government/public funders. She is responsible for conducting prospect research, creating and submitting proposals, ensuring appropriate recognition for gifts, and submitting reports for all institutional supporters. In addition, Jessica manages stewardship activities for institutional funders.

Fun Facts about Jessica:

• I’m a Florida girl at heart.
• I love to travel… especially if it’s overseas.
• Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite.