KaTE FOWlE: Beyond the Gallery Trained as a painter at the Norwich School of Art and Design, then as a curator through the Arts Council of England, Kate Fowle moved from London to San Francisco three and a half years ago to pursue the two loves in her life — her American husband and contemporary art. Before coming to California College of the Arts, Fowle ran a curatorial partnership in London, smith + fowle, that specialized in commissioning contemporary art. Fowle continues to work as an independent curator in addition to cochairing Curatorial Practice with Ralph Rugoff, director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. In San Francisco her projects have included 17 Reasons (2003) with gallery owner Jack Hanley. Taking art to the streets of the Mission District, the exhibition offered local and internationally known artists a chance to present new work on street corners and in store windows — breaking out of the gallery context to engage with the environment. It should come as no surprise that in the CCA curriculum, Fowle espouses partnerships and expanded approaches to curating. By “creating a broad network and adding a little generosity into the equation, everyone learns faster,” she comments. In their professional development course, Fowle’s students establish relationships with projects and organizations. Through a collaboration with inSite, a project focused on commissioning artistic interventions into the social fabric of San Diego–Tijuana, students have the opportunity to explore the public art process. Further afield, Fowle has developed a partnership with Arts Initiative Tokyo, which hosted first-year students this semester on a research trip to Japan. “By forging collaborations with other organizations, we can start to create an international network,” says Fowle. She has been instrumental, with the support of various funders, in bringing over 20 speakers and visiting faculty from overseas in the past year, including Midori Matsui (Japan), Manray Hsu (Taipei), Mami Kataoka (Japan), and Santiago Sierra (Mexico). As if all this were not enough to keep Fowle busy, she also publishes frquently in her field. She is a contributor to What We Want Is Free by CCA adjunct professor Ted Purves (SUNY Press, 2004), her book on recent architecture in San Francisco is forthcoming from Batsford, and she has begun working on a project to translate texts by contemporary Asian artists and curators into English.
Photo: schuyler crawford
“Curating today is a kind of renaissance endeavor.” — Kate Fowle
— erica holt, Marketing and communications associate
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