Public lecture by Hesse McGraw, Curator at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

Monday, February 18, at 7:00 pm, in Room 116, Art Building West (map)

Hesse McGraw is Chief Curator of exhibitions and projects at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. He oversees three main gallery spaces and the UNDERGROUND. Under McGraw's leadership, the exhibition program functions as a laboratory for artists and focuses on site-specific, immersive, cross-disciplinary and socially engaged projects. He has recently developed projects with Michael Jones McKean, Theaster Gates, and Leslie Shows.Prior to joining the Bemis Center in 2008, he was associate director at Max Protetch in New York City. From 2002 through 2005 he served as the founding director and curator of Paragraph, a Charlotte Street Foundation initiative in Kansas City, Missouri, where he also served as senior editor of Review. McGraw holds a BFA from the University of Kansas and completed graduate research at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. He lectures widely and is a frequent visiting curator and critic for art and architecture programs throughout the United States. His writing is regularly published internationally in exhibition catalogues and arts and culture publications.Current recognition includes an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship, an inaugural Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant, an NEA Our Town grant, and a Harpo Foundation Grant. He was a 2011 fellow of the NAMAC Visual Arts Leadership Institute. He serves on the boards of Nebraskans for the Arts, the Council Bluffs Public Art Commission, Whoop Dee Doo, and design alliance OMAHA.