Valerie Casey, head of the Samsung Accelerator, delivers the opening lecture in the Spring 2015 Art Center Dialogues series on February 4, 7 p.m.
Spring term brings the next exciting installment in a long-running annual lecture series endowed by the Toyota Motor Company. This year, Art Center Dialogues highlights influential leaders in creative fields and also explores what leading creatively means.
Confirmed speakers include Valerie Casey, head of the Samsung Accelerator; Helen Molesworth, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; Harriet Rubin, Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and author, consultant and lecturer on leadership trends; Dede Gardner, President of Plan B Entertainment and producer of the films 12 Years A Slave, The Normal Heart and Selma; and Jessica Yellin, former Chief White House correspondent for CNN.
“Leaders in art, film, business and design practices, our speakers have changed both the questions we ask and the solutions we might find when it comes to thinking about 21st-century culture,” says Humanities and Sciences (H&S) Chair Jane McFadden, who curates the series. “We have invited them to inspire thoughtful discussion and broaden perspectives by engaging with our community across a variety of educational platforms, including lectures, panel discussions, workshops and collaborative endeavors.”
The Art Center Dialogues series kicks off February 4. Schedule and location details are at the bottom of this post. Admission is free and open to the public and to our campus community, and reservations are not required.
McFadden, appointed H&S chair last May, served on Art Center’s faculty prior to taking on her new role. As a full-time faculty member, she has taught a variety of cultural history courses across the College, from undergraduate Fine Art to graduate Industrial Design. She was a founding member of Faculty Commons and served as a co-moderator for the Faculty Commons Summit on Teaching and Learning at Art Center in 2012. In addition to the Toyota Lecture Series, she has also administered the Art Center Design Histories Fellowship program.
As Provost Fred Fehlau noted, “Jane’s appointment reflects a deepening commitment to expanding Art Center’s strong focus on practice, research and discourse.”
Jane McFadden, chair of Humanities and Sciences and curator of Art Center Dialogues. (Art Center photo by Chuck Spangler)
McFadden’s enthusiasm for her work and the people she works with is apparent in the classroom and beyond.
“During my tenure at Art Center, I have truly grown to love it,” she says. “The intensity of the students, the delight of the unexpected perspective, the opportunities to work with those I might never have encountered elsewhere, and most importantly, the camaraderie of our task. I look forward to working with fellow faculty and staff as we continue building a strong educational community to face the challenges of art and design education in the 21st century.”
McFadden received her BA from Duke University and her MA and PhD in art history from the University of Texas at Austin. Widely published, her writing has appeared in Art Journal, Grey Room, Modern Painters and X-tra; and she is the author of recent essays for Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art, 1945–1980 at the J. Paul Getty Museum and Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. She was awarded a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant for her forthcoming book, Walter de Maria: Meaningless Work.
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SPRING 2015 SCHEDULE
Art Center Dialogues: Catalyzing Creativity, Criticality and Community
Wed., Feb. 4, 2015, 7 p.m.
Valerie Casey, Head of the Samsung Accelerator
Hosted by Mariana Amatullo, Vice President, Designmatters
Location: Ahmanson Theater, Hillside Campus (1700 Lida St., Pasadena)
Mon., Feb. 23, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Co-hosted by the Graduate Art Department
Location: Wind Tunnel, South Campus (950 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena)
Wed., Feb. 25, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Harriet Rubin, Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and author, consultant and lecturer on leadership trends will present a talk entitled “The Secret Life of Leaders.”
Leadership is a high-concept word in Washington and on Wall Street. But what is leadership in our decentered world of social media, crowd sourcing, and destabilizing forces, rendering even presidents powerless? Harriet Rubin offers her experiences of artists who used visionary means to reshape technology, nations and markets.
Hosted by Terry Lee Stone, Humanities and Sciences Director of Entrepreneurship and Business
Location: Ahmanson Theater, Hillside Campus (1700 Lida St., Pasadena)
Wed., March 11, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Dede Gardner, President of Plan B Entertainment and producer of 12 Years A Slave, The Normal Heart, and Selma
Hosted by Jane McFadden, Chair, Humanities and Sciences Department
Location: L.A. Times Media Center, Hillside Campus (1700 Lida St., Pasadena)
Date and location to be announced
Jessica Yellin, television journalist and former CNN Chief White House Correspondent
Hosted by Jane McFadden, Chair, Humanities and Sciences Department, and Wendy Adest, Chair, Integrated Studies Department
