Please join us for an online conversation between Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Frye Art Museum, Amanda Donnan, and Chief Curator of San José Museum of Art, Lauren Schell Dickens, as they discuss the current exhibition Kelly Akashi: Formations.

Curated by Lauren Schell Dickens, Formations is Kelly Akashi’s first major museum exhibition. Presented non-chronologically, the exhibition represents nearly a decade of Akashi’s work, which incorporates her studies in botany, geology, paleontology, and ancestral lineage and utilizes such wide-ranging processes as glass blowing, bronze casting, candle and rope making, and cameraless photography. Each artwork in the exhibition suggests an intimate encounter, and these encounters expand and reshape meaning as they accumulate.

About the Panelists

Amanda Donnan is Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Frye Art Museum, where she has overseen the artistic program and organized numerous exhibitions since 2017. Previously she served as Director/Curator of the galleries at Seattle University, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and Production Coordinator at Art21 in New York. She holds an MA in art history from SUNY Stony Brook and a dual BFA/BS in studio art and art education from the Pennsylvania State University.

Lauren Schell Dickens is chief curator at the San José Museum of Art. Since joining the museum in 2016 as curator, she has organized solo exhibitions and projects with Diana Al-Hadid, Sadie Barnette, Sofia Cordova, Woody de Othello, Brendan Fernandes, Sky Hopinka, Glenn Kaino and Tommie Smith, The Propeller Group, Aislinn Thomas, and Lara Schnitger; major survey exhibitions of Rina Banerjee and Kelly Akashi; and group exhibitions including Our whole, unruly selves (2021), Other Walks, Other Lines (2018), The House Imaginary (2018), and The Darkened Mirror: Global Perspectives on Water (2017). Prior to joining SJMA, Dickens held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Art and Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Her public project with The Propeller Group and El Mac was awarded the 2018 Creative Impact Award by the city of San José. She is a 2019 Warhol Curatorial Research Fellow and recipient of the Fellows of Contemporary Art 2022 Curators Award. She holds degrees from Yale University and Columbia University.

About the Curatorial Conversations Series

Frye members are invited to listen, learn, and engage with curators, artists, and the creative community in our members-only virtual series. This quarterly program features a live online discussion followed by a 15-minute Q+A.