Board Candidates
2008 CAA Board of Directors Election
Judith Thorpe, University of Connecticut
Statement: My vision of the arts and education is to create a forum for critical dialogue regarding the making and study of the arts. Such a program requires an intensive and rigorous study of the fields and supports cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching, creative activity, and scholarship. The result is a broad education inclusive of the study of the liberal arts and a curriculum emphasizing creative expression, critical thinking, equality, diversity, and integrity.
My artistic practice is central to my administrative leadership: my creative work guides and nurtures my passion for art education. In my academic appointments, I have worked closely with colleagues in art history, architecture, design, and film and media arts, as well as those in music, drama, and creative writing. My wealth of knowledge and experience has well prepared me to serve the CAA membership.
As a Board member, I will bring my varied experiences as an artist, educator, administrator, and curator. But most important, I will bring my passion and advocacy for the arts.
Biography: Judith Thorpe is professor of art and head of the Art and Art History Department in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Prior to her appointment there, she was associate professor of art at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she also served as senior associate dean for academic affairs and graduate-program director, and as affiliated professor of women’s studies. Prior to that, she was associate professor of art and chairperson of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Colorado in Denver and served as executive director of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE). A current member of the board of directors of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, Thorpe has served on the boards of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations, the National Association of Art Administrators, and the Print Center. A reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute for Museum Services, and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, she presently serves on CAA’s Services to Artists Committee.
Thorpe’s creative work in photography has been exhibited at venues such as the International Fine Art Fair and Jane H. Baum Gallery in New York; the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut; Flatfile Galleries and Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago; Nexus (now the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center) and the Atlanta Gallery of Photography in Georgia; and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Thorpe has also organized the exhibitions BodyWorks, which included artists who use the body as an expression of relationships between cultural and personal identities, and Female Problems, a show of work by four artists dealing with issues related to women and medical practice.