Internationally known critic Dan Cameron was invited to MSU to write on the MFA Thesis exhibition at the Broad Art Museum at MSU. This writing will highlights the work of MFA candidates in our graduate program graduating in 2023; Kelsey Blacklock, Ursula Heder, Lewis, and christian olid-ramirez. He was on campus in October, 2022, interviewing graduate students and beginning working on a series of essays that were published in the exhibition catalogue. Additionally during his time on campus, Cameron offered a public lecture and met with Faculty.
Dan Cameron is a curator of contemporary art who also writes about art, teaches & gives lectures about art, makes art, serves on art-related juries and boards, and advises both public and private collections. He has lived in downtown Manhattan since 1979, although for periods of time he has also been based in New Orleans, LA and Long Beach, CA.
Throughout his 40-plus year career organizing exhibitions, Dan has steadfastly championed both the unexpected and the under-recognized. In 1982, he was the first American curator to organize a museum exhibition on LGBTQ art, and in 2008 he launched the Prospect New Orleans triennial in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Along the way, he has curated international biennials in Istanbul, Taipei, Ecuador and Orange County, California, as well as retrospectives of such esteemed artists as Carolee Schneemann, Paul McCarthy, Peter Saul, William Kentridge, Faith Ringgold, David Wojnarowicz, Marcel Odenbach, Pierre et Gilles, Cildo Meireles, and Martin Wong. As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative in 2017, the Palm Springs Art Museum hosted Dan’s exhibition Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art 1954-1969.
Dan’s core connection with art stems from its capacity to expand our collective awareness of ourselves, the world around us, and the way that humans invent ways to communicate essential values with one another. Not only is art capable of changing the world, he believes, but it’s actually doing just that on a daily basis. Whether in the cause of furthering social justice or challenging art history, or both, Dan believes that the artist’s fundamental obligation to civilization is to push sensorial and perceptual engagement into new & fruitful realms of engagement. The curator’s role in all this is to provide an appropriate platform and context for that expression, and to public a public forum for viewers to more fully immerse themselves in the experience, and for the artists & organizers to engage in critical dialogue about the art and its meaning.
For more information about Dan Cameron, please visit his website.
