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The College of Arts + Architecture at UNC Charlotte is pleased to welcome new Director of Galleries Crista Cammaroto. Ms. Cammaroto joined the CoA+A on July 5.
The artistic director and curator of The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography & Film from 2004-2007, Ms. Cammaroto serves as art curator for TEDx Charlotte. She has taught most recently at Queens University of Charlotte and served as Chair of the Photography Department at Oregon College of Arts and Craft (2003-2004) and the Photography Department at Central Piedmont Community College (1998-2001).
Ms. Cammaroto is also a prolific interdisciplinary artist with an active role in a collaborative exhibition group called CORE Visual Art, an organization comprised of former affiliate residents of McColl Center for Visual Art (she was an affiliate in 2003). Her residencies include Little Italy Arts Center, McColl Center for Visual Art, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, UNC Charlotte, and the private collection of Andreas Bechtler.
As Director of Galleries for the College of Arts + Architecture, Ms. Cammaroto will schedule and curate exhibitions and programs in the Storrs Gallery on the UNC Charlotte campus and in the new gallery in the UNC Charlotte Center City Building at Ninth and Brevard streets. In creating programming, she will foster interdisciplinary collaborations and experimentations among faculty and with artists from outside UNC Charlotte, with occasional commissioning of new work."I will be bringing in thought-provoking art from all over the world and around the corner to inspire Charlotte with a variety of ideas about what art & design can be," Ms. Cammaroto said. "Part of my job is to shine a light on the best of our UNC Charlotte creative intellect by creating a venue that exudes an openness to the community of Charlotte for collaborative 'new work' exhibitions and performances from our own faculty . We will be making a footprint with a challenging freshness, increasing pedestrian pathways to our City Center Building and reaching out to other arts organizations regularly, working together to increase the value of art within our Charlotte and Southeastern locale."
Ms. Cammaroto will also serve, with George Kaperonis, as steward of the Lona-Frey collection, a historically significant collection of contemporary art on extended loan to the College of Arts + Architecture. Much of that collection will find a home for exhibition throughout the new City Center Building. Its significant holdings, which include pieces by Robert Motherwell, Robert Mapplethorpe, Julian Schnabel, Jim Dine, and Roy Lichtenstein, will also inspire gallery programming that focuses on individual artists represented in the collection.
"The College is philosophically grounded in interdisciplinary and collaborative practices, and Crista's career as an artist and curator is dedicated to these methods and interactions," said Ken Lambla, Dean of the College of Arts + Architecture. "She brings an experimental and challenging sensibility that complements our educational goals, and she understands the catalytic potential of showing art, invigorating the community through art and design, using art to tell better stories, and developing the craft of exhibition and performance. She is bold, energetic, and sensitive."
Among the exhibitions planned for the new center city gallery is the North American premiere of Violins of Hope in April 2012, an exhibition of 18 violins recovered and restored from the Holocaust by master violinmaker Amnon Weinstein.
About the CoA+A Gallery System
The mission of the College of Arts + Architecture gallery system is to create lively forums in which the curious encounter the work of global, regional, and local artists through diverse media and dynamic exchanges that are nourished by the intellectual and creative life of the university. Our programming will echo crossovers of the visual arts, architecture, music, theatre, and dance inherent to the College of Arts + Architecture at UNC Charlotte. We seek to provide a haven for experimentation, to invigorate the environments we occupy, and to amplify the means to engage art and design in our community.
