SFAI Legacy Foundation + Archive
Ida y Vuelta: Experiencias de la migración en el arte puertorriqueño contemporáneo
Dust Specks on the Sea: Contemporary Sculpture from the French Caribbean & Haiti
Alexandra Bowman: HOME BODIES
Patti Smith: Wing
Will Brown: Ether
Martin Machado: Fluid State
Bill Fontana: Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns
Mariana Castillo Deball: Feathered Changes, Serpant Disappearances
Jill Magid: The Proposal
Recent Press
“For nearly 100 years, the archive has been part of the campus architecture. It lines the staircase of the bell tower, taking up nearly every available nook and cranny. Removing the material from the school will be “wrenching,” Alexander says. But at the same time, maybe it’s for the best. “We don’t want to be the ghosts,” she adds.”
Sarah Hotchkiss, KQED, February 15, 2023
“To those viewing the exhibition, Carlos Villa’s work is a tale of forging a history that was arguably nonexistent before. Because of him, many Filipino-American artists will have a point of reference for history—and an artist to look to when considering their own identities in the art world.”
Isiah Magsino, W Magazine, April 26, 2022
“The exhibition that recently opened in the Walter and McBean Galleries, ‘Dust Specks on the Sea,’ features sculptural work by over a dozen artists from the Caribbean diaspora. The show opened in Harlem and has toured to Miami and Albuquerque before coming to SFAI, and many of the artists included have never before shown on the West Coast.”
Max Blue, SF Examiner, December 16, 2021
“Art exhibitions can make you feel as if you’re on a voyage, traveling far away from all that you know. It may be the subject matter that makes you feel this way, or the media, or the artists’ unique experiences. Sometimes it’s all three. Dust Specks on the Sea: Contemporary Sculpture From the French Caribbean & Haiti, on view at the San Francisco Art Institute’s Walter and McBean Galleries until March 5, is that kind of show.”
Gina Gotsill, Local News Matters, Bay Area, December 29, 2021
“You know how it usually goes when museums survey the contemporary art of non-Western regions; they focus on a few zones already on the radar of a multinational’s chief development officer, like “the Middle East” or “Latin America” or even the 4.5-billion-strong region of “Asia,” and flatten them into inconsequence. It’s much rarer to see shows with a real local focus on places beyond the executive suite’s gaze, like this small but very welcome exhibition of nearly two dozen artists from the Francophone Caribbean, at Hunter College’s outpost in East Harlem.”
Jason Farago, New York Times, February 20, 2019
"‘I’m very talismanic,” Smith said. ‘But it’s idiosyncratic.’ Much of Smith’s work reflects her deep reverence for ordinary objects and the poetry they contain. ‘When I’m working, what’s in my close proximity might be random, or it might be chosen. They might be of no particular calculable value, but they’re infinitely precious. They contain something of the owner. I find something beautiful about that.’”
Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, January 17, 2019
“The quiet elimination of curatorial jobs is a troubling manifestation of a Bay Area arts ecosystem that struggles to find stability despite a booming local economy. Institutions ‘restructure,’ ‘return to their core missions’ and ‘redefine their priorities’ in attempts to both clarify their role within a competitive field of development dollars and audience attention and pare down budgets.”
Sarah Hotchkiss, KQED, September 20, 2018
“I think we do have a responsibility in showing art and tackling some of the most present and urgent political matters… It feels even more urgent now than it did when FOR-SITE was founded in 2003. There are more and more voices that need to be elevated and stories that need to be shared. I certainly feel a responsibility personally and as a curator to make that a part of my practice.”
Elsa Garcia, Umbigo Magazine, October 2019
“Fluid State inspires viewers to think about the “invisible industry” that transports 90 percent of the world’s goods by sea. ‘People assume it all happens naturally, or automatically,’ he said, pointing to a detailed black-ink portrait of a fellow hard-hatted crew member standing on the deck of a ship. ‘But there are real people’s lives behind everything. Without them, globalization is just an idea.’
Jessica Zack, San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2018
‘You’ll hear a bird from 1981 and a bird from 2018,’ says Morgan, who appreciates the play of time and distance in this atmospheric work. ‘Some people will come seeking this out, some people will stumble upon it, and some will walk by and never know it’s here.’
Jesse Hamlin, San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2018
Bio & CV
She is currently serving as Interim Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries. Recent projects include a long-term permanent collection exhibition with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz and a guest-curated exhibition for The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art. Prior positions include: Program Director of FOR-SITE Foundation, Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Assistant Curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, all in San Francisco, CA. She has organized major exhibitions and public programs with artists and collectives including Ai Weiwei, Patti Smith, Jill Magid, Postcommodity, and Bill Fontana.
Katie recently oversaw the critically-acclaimed touring exhibitions Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision (for SFAI and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco), the first-ever major museum retrospective for a Filipino-American artist, and the 26-artist exhibition Dust Specks on the Sea: Sculpture from the French Caribbean and Haiti (for Hunter College and multiple international venues).
Katie worked at San Francisco Art Institute in various curatorial roles over the period of a decade, including that of Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs. She served as Assistant Curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts where she organized the 82-artist group exhibition When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes (2012). She was Program Director of FOR-SITE Foundation from 2019-2021 and Director and Curator of the artist-run Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in San Francisco from 2009-2012. She has organized major exhibitions and public programs with artists and collectives including Ai Weiwei, Patti Smith, Jill Magid, Alicia McCarthy, Postcommodity, and Bill Fontana, among many others.
She has contributed curatorial projects and programming at institutions and organizations including the Oakland Museum of California; the de Young Museum; California College of the Arts; SFMOMA; and MASS MoCA. She has participated in presentations, juries, and studio critiques with Creative Capital, NARS Foundation, Hunter College, the Wassaic Project, School of Visual Arts, New York, and ACRE Residency, Wisconsin.
Katie earned her BFA in History of Art and Visual Culture at University of California-Santa Cruz, and her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts. She is a founding board member of the SFAI Legacy Foundation + Archive and she sits on the Advisory Board for Cycladic Arts, an artist-run gallery and residency in Paros, Greece.
