About
Director's Welcome
University art museums are, at their best, equal parts classroom, laboratory, entertainment center and spiritual gym where good ideas are worked out and bad ideas are worked off. Holland Cotter, New York Times, February 20, 2009
Surprising. Invigorating. Thought provoking.The Arizona State University Art Museum continues to present the best in contemporary art with exhibitions in all media by regional and international, emerging and established artists. The ASU Art Museum organizes these outstanding contemporary art exhibitions – which often receive national and international attention – and presents them in innovative ways for students and visitors.
The fall 2009 season, titled Defining Sustainability, is a series of dynamic and interactive projects that will come together at the ASU Art Museum to illustrate ideas about sustainability. Each exhibition or project tells a simple story – an artist’s proposal for green transportation or a designer’s solution for recycled shade structures – which together convey the complexity of sustaining life on earth. A nontraditional art museum project, artists and designers, faculty and students will engage the greater Phoenix community in their creative processes and in conversations on sustainability. The diverse projects range in materials and format, and are installed throughout the ASU Art Museum to tell stories of environmental, social and cultural sustainability.
In Defining Sustainability, art and the museum are catalyst and site for campus and community members to gather and further the conversation on sustainability. While many of the projects focus on this place, they have implications for art, museums and urban centers throughout the country and the world. Today’s art museum is a pristine, controlled environment, keeping the landscape, with all its environmental systems, hazards and problems, at bay. The ASU Art Museum strives to forge a new model for the university art museum as an open, interdisciplinary lab to explore real world issues through the lens of the creative process.
Our museum is a gathering place for people to interact, collaborate, explore contemporary art, participate in creative process and discuss our contemporary world.
In addition to the Defining Sustainability projects and exhibitions, the ASU Art Museum continues to advance its Moving Targets initiative with the group video exhibition, I'm Keeping an Eye on You, which explores the broad and lasting effects of our curiosity and intrusions upon others. The exhibition was curated by John Spiak initially as a single channel installation for Aqua Art Miami, December 2008. For a full season overview: http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/exhibitions/
The ASU Art Museum, part of the ASU Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, is reinventing the university art museum of the future. The ASU Art Museum serves the university, the field and the broader community by pursuing the highest level of research and experimentation in our exhibitions, programs, collections and publications. We are a laboratory for artists, students and the public.
We look forward to seeing you at our exhibitions and programs. Join us in the galleries!
Heather S. Lineberry
Senior Curator and Interim Director