Contacts

COMMITTEE STRUCTURE

The Steering Committee, with the guidance and support of the Project Director, determines the strategic directions and emphases for AWAKE, and sets the agendas for the Consortium meetings. The Steering Committee assesses suggestions and proposals that arise in the course of Consortium meetings, and evaluates projects proposed for the public program phase. The Steering Committee also monitors other aspects of the program such as fundraising, the website, the development of a national program, and program publication(s). The Content Consultant Committee suggests topics for consideration by the Steering Committee for inclusion in the Consortium agendas; monitors the results of the Consortium meetings for balance and thoroughness; and evaluates Consortium white papers for development into essays for the scholarly publication. Consortium Members attend Consortium meetings; hear and discuss white papers and presentations by other Consortium Members and invited speakers; discuss, refine, and elaborate upon the program topics; generate new ideas for consideration by the Steering Committee; and propose projects for the public program. The Consortium is complemented by a group of National Associates, arts professionals and other specialists interested in utilizing or contributing to the resources of the project, and who will participate in Consortium meetings as their schedules allow.

STEERING COMMITTEE

Steering Committee

Jacquelynn Baas, Project Director and Chair
E-mail: jbaas@mcn.org

Linda Duke, Director of Education
UCLA Hammer Museum
E-mail: lduke@arts.ucla.edu

Mary Jane Jacob, Independent Curator, Curator for Project Development
E-mail: mjjacob@ameritech.net

Yvonne Rand, Resident Teacher, Goat-in-the-Road Buddhist Practice Center, Muir Beach
E-mail: goats@infoasis.com

Michael S. Roth, President, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland and San Francisco
E-mail: mroth@ccac-art.edu

Jordan Simmons, Executive and Artistic Director, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, Richmond
E-mail: jordan@eastbaycenter.org

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Jacquelynn Baas received her B.A. in Art History from Michigan State University, where she studied with Elizabeth Gilmore Holt; and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Michigan. Her academic specialties include the history of prints, nineteenth-century French art, and twentieth-century art and architecture. Her publications and exhibitions include « Reconsidering Walter Benjamin » in The Documented Image: Visions in Art History (Syracuse University Press, 1987); The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty (MIT Press, 1990); The Art of Joan Brown (University of California Press, 1998); and « Citadels of Inclusive Awareness » in Conversations at the Castle: Changing Audiences and Contemporary Art (MIT Press, 1998). Baas began her museum career in 1974 at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, where she served as registrar and then assistant director. In 1982 she went to Dartmouth College as chief curator. There, she helped plan and built the Hood Museum of Art (Charles Moore, architect), becoming director in 1985. She moved to Berkeley in 1989 to direct the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, strengthening the museum’s relationship with its community and leading two successful fundraising drives. In July of 1999 Baas stepped down as director to devote herself to writing and consulting; she was named Director Emeritus in September 1999.

Linda Duke is an art historian who is Director of Education at the UCLA Hammer Museum. At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she studied tea ceremony with painter, performing artist and tea master Shozo Sato. Her graduate school advisor was Kiyohiko Munakata, an art historian who specializes in Chinese painting theory and concepts of sacred landscape. Both of these teachers were and are serious students of Zen. Duke has taught both Western and Asian art history. She served as project director for the NEH-funded exhibition « Sacred Mountains in Chinese Art » (1990-91), curated by Munakata. A scholarly catalogue of the same name was published in conjunction with the show. Since 1991, Duke has worked as an art museum educator with a strong interest in aesthetic thinking and growth. She has worked closely with the research team (Abigail Housen and Philip Yenawine) that created the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a discussion facilitation technique that helps people look with increasing mindfulness at works of visual art. Duke is deeply interested in the connections between aesthetic experience and compassion, as the term is used in Buddhism.

Mary Jane Jacob staged some of the first retrospectives and key surveys of American and European artists during her tenures as chief curator of the Museums of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Los Angeles in the 1980s. Exploring art outside the museum context as an independent curator since 1990, she has tested the boundaries of public space and relationship of contemporary art to audience through the exhibitions « Places with a Past: New Site-Specific Art in Charleston » for the Spoleto Festival USA (1991); « Culture in Action: New Public Art in Chicago » for Sculpture Chicago (1993); « Points of Entry » for Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Arts Festival; and, on the occasion of the Centennial Olympic Games, « Conversations at The Castle: Changing Audiences and Contemporary Art » for the Arts Festival of Atlanta (1996). She also organized for Arts International a series of dialogues among participants from around the world that explored new curatorial concerns, staging meetings in Venice (1990), Sao Paulo (1991), and Barcelona (1993). Among her current projects, Ms. Jacob is working on program on differing views of heritage, « Listening Across Cultures and Communities, » for the 2001-02 Spoleto Festival USA; and developing the artists’ project component of the inaugural exhibition for The Jewish Museum San Francisco. She is on the graduate faculty of the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture at Bard College, New York, and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Yvonne Rand is a Zen Buddhist priest and meditation teacher. She commenced her studies in Eastern religion while an undergraduate at Stanford University, where she majored in Chinese intellectual history. Within a few years after graduation from Stanford, she became a student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the Zen teacher around whom the San Francisco Zen Center formed in the late 1950s and from whom Ms. Rand received her initial training in Zen meditation and mindfulness practices. She was ordained as a priest in the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism in 1973. She received Dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Roshi in 1989. In addition to Suzuki Roshi and Katagiri Roshi, Ms. Rand’s other primary teachers are His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the late Ven. Tara Tulku; Yaeko Nakamura (Japanese Tea Ceremony and Noh Theater chanting); and Harry Kellett Roberts (Native American Wisdom traditions). In the course of her career, Ms. Rand has studied with other distinguished teachers in several Buddhist schools: Maurine Stuart Roshi (Rinzai Zen), Robert Aitken Roshi (Soto Zen), Shodo Harada Roshi (Rinzai Zen), Dr. Edward Conze (Buddhist scholar), Lama Anagarika Govinda (Buddhist scholar and teacher), and the Ven. Henepola Gunaratana (Theravadan). Yvonne Rand is the resident teacher at Redwood Creek Dharma Center, located in Marin County, California, where she leads a program of regularly calendared retreats and hosts visiting teachers. Ms. Rand also offers lecture series, conducts workshops, and leads retreats at other venues in the United States and abroad. She is well versed in the fields of psychology, Buddhist sacred art, contemporary art, and women’s issues, all of which contribute to the content and style of her teaching.

Michael S. Roth has been an educator since 1983. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University, and his Master’s and Doctoral degrees in History from Princeton University. He has held numerous academic positions, including Professor of History and Cultural Studies and Director of the European Studies Program at the Claremont Graduate School, and founding Director of the Scripps College Humanities Institute. He is the author of several books, including The Ironist’s Cage: Trauma, Memory and the Construction of History (Columbia University Press, 1995) and Psycho-Analysis as History: Negation and Freedom in Freud (Cornell University Press, 1995). He was the curator of « Irresistible Decay » (Getty Center, 1997), and « Freud: Conflict and Culture » (Library of Congress, 1998). Before his appointment as President of the California College of Arts and Crafts in 2000, Michael Roth was Associate Director of the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Jordan Simmons, Artistic Director, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, Richmond, CA. Jordan Simmons is a 1978 graduate of Reed College (Portland, Oregon) in American Studies/Jazz; he has also done postgraduate work in Ethnomusicology and Jazz Composition at Indiana University from 1980-82. He has taught African music, Brazilian dance and percussion, European classical and jazz piano, composition, and theory in addition to producing and directing a number of original works for theater and film. As a performer, he has worked in such important and culturally diverse ensembles as « olodum » (Bahia, Brazil), 1981, 84, 85; « Corpo Santo » (Afro-Brazilian Dance Theater) in San Francisco; the Ladzekpo Brothers West African Music and Dance Ensemble, 1982-present; and the Japanese Music Institute of America in San Francisco 1980-present. He is a licensed shakuhachi (traditional bamboo flute) teacher and internationally recognized contra-mestre of Capoeira. He regularly addresses regional and national conferences on curriculum innovation and the educational and leadership imperatives that shape the role of the arts community in life.