Tressa Berman

Tressa Berman is a cultural anthropologist whose work spans transnational sites and engages questions of heritage, authorship, and possession as they converge around the production and circulation of art. Through her nonprofit organization, BorderZone Arts*, her projects create new contexts for emerging, indigenous, and historically underrepresented artists, as well as links with other Bay Area nonprofit arts organizations. She integrates her community-based practices with her teaching as an adjunct professor of Diversity Studies at CCA.

She also is a former curatorial staff member of the California Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution and currently works as an independent curator and consultant to numerous local and international organizations. Her awards include an NEA project grant and a Rockefeller Fellowship. Her second book, No Deal! Indigenous Arts and the Politics of Possession, is forthcoming from SAR Press.