Highlights from 2020-21
“Every single person in power [in a museum] needs to do a reckoning with their own understanding of racial justice.”
ASU Art Museum Director Miki Garcia weighed in on changing institutions from the inside as part of the “How to Change” series on KCET, Los Angeles PBS member television station.
Above Pilot Projects: Hindsight is 2020/Making Place Keeping Place
March 26, 2021
The ASU Art Museum explored light as an artistic medium through several projects. Artist Leo Villareal debuted a work in November that used technology to harness light. For the work, Villareal did three-dimensional mapping of the ASU Art Museum building and used the data to create an active light work specific to the museum. In December, the museum held a “Sunrise Light Walk,” a guided walk that explored features on the Tempe campus using the four cardinal directions as a guide. And the museum produced “Traditional Stories of Light,” a free, all-ages coloring book. The project is a collaboration of the museum and three Native American artists: Vanessa Moreno, who is Purépecha and Tepehuán, designed the book, which was illustratrated by Eunique Yazzie, who is Navajo, and Dustin Lopez, who is Navajo, Yaqui and Laguna Pueblo.
Above José Clemente Orozco: The Final Cut
Jan. 30–June 5, 2021
Mary-Beth Buesgen, curator of the Ceramics Research Center Collection and Archive at the ASU Art Museum, was named one of 15 women curators to know in Arizona by Phoenix New Times. Buesgen has worked with university collections and archives for over 20 years, including 13 years at the ASU Art Museum where she has curated a number of shows. She curated the recent “DinnerWhere” exhibition that highlights the ways in which objects encourage critical conversations around national identity, rituals, food resources and inequities in the United States. Buesgen is a ceramic artist and metal worker with a MS in graphic information technology and a certificate in museum students.
Pilot Projects photos by Laura Segall.
Stories of light photo by Uplifted Creative. Leo Villareal, “Point Cloud (ASU),” 2020, 12’ 10” x 3’ 3” x 1’ 1”, LEDs, custom software, electrical hardware, steel.
Jose Celmente Orozco photos by Craig Smith.
Curator to know photo by Morgan Morell. Claydies, “True feelings,” 2011, Glazed porcelain, Purchased with funds provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.
