Fifty Years of Bay Area Art: The SECA Awards
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2011
Hardcover, 168 pages, $29.95

Tanya Zimbardo (MA Curatorial Practice 2005), SFMOMA's assistant curator of media arts, coauthored this book chronicling and illustrating more than 100 SECA Award recipients from the late 1960s to the present, including CCA alumni Squeak Carnwath, Desirée Holman, Mitzi Pederson, Laurie Reid, Leslie Shows, and Kathryn VanDyke, among others. Featured faculty include Rebeca Bollinger, Kota Ezawa, Thom Faulders, Chris Finley, Donald Fortescue, Amy Franceschini, Clay Jensen, Jordan Kantor, Shaun O'Dell, Maria Porges, and Mary Snowden.

Wendover
CCA Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, 2010
Paperback, 152 pages, free

Wendover documents a series of three Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice courses led by Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) Director Matthew Coolidge and Curatorial Practice faculty member Marina McDougall. Analyzing exhibition and residency models, and looking more broadly at factors such as audience and site-specific programming, the enrolled students engaged with the CLUI outpost and artist residency in Wendover over a three-year period. A reader of sorts, the publication distills the students' activities and interactions with Wendover and documents their resulting projects: an audio tour (2008); a film program (2009); and an archive expansion (2010). Also included are interviews with Coolidge, Center for Art and Environment Director William Fox, and numerous texts contributed by students and visiting faculty. Contact sstone@cca.edu for a copy.

The Istanbul Biennial is a key event in the international contemporary art scene -- a highly visible, highly respected exhibition that draws more than 100,000 visitors to the city and exposes them to some of the most engaged and relevant art being made today. In its opening week, the 12th Istanbul Biennial (which remains open through November 13) was attended by almost 4,000 guests, including critics, curators, museum and gallery administrators, and approximately 400 members of the press from 50 different countries. Everything they saw (whether they realized it or not) bore the marks of a CCA affiliate's hand -- specifically two CCA curators, one CCA graphic designer, and one CCA editor. They also saw the work of one faculty member and three alumni; all three alumni had entire galleries devoted to their work.

CCA President Stephen Beal, chair of the Board of Trustees F. Noel Perry, other trustees, and several members of the CCA Curator's Forum (a dedicated group of Wattis Institute supporters) flew to Istanbul for the opening weekend. Stephen Beal remarked, standing at the biennial entrance, "It is very gratifying to see the college so prominently represented here. It is evidence of the major relevance, at the international level, of what we are doing, and the kinds of experiences and access that CCA makes available to its community."

The Curators

It was almost two years ago that Wattis Institute director Jens Hoffmann accepted the invitation to co-curate the 12th Istanbul Biennial. Beginning with that moment, what began as a single thread of connection between the college and the city of Istanbul expanded into a densely packed web involving multiple individuals.

The event announcement promised: "Learn (almost) everything you need to know to escape civilization." And the public came, to learn about such things as the history of the back-to-the-land movement (from original back-to-the-lander Hank Meals), the construction of simple domes, how to make rope from twigs, and "wildcrafting," or foraging from nature in a way that sustains local ecologies.