ARTSblog

Name: Katherine Gressel

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Bio: Katherine Gressel received her BA in art from Yale University and MA in arts administration from Teachers College/Columbia University. She currently serves as Programs Manager at Smack Mellon gallery, where she oversees the Artist Studio residency program and two arts education programs, and has previously worked in arts program management, community outreach, and fundraising for the grassroots nonprofits Arts to Grow and the Urban Assembly School of Music and Art. Katherine also freelances as an independent artist and curator; she is the founder and chief curator of the "Brooklyn Utopias" exhibit and events series, which for the past 3 years has invited artists to respond to local social and environmental issues. "Brooklyn Utopias" has received grants from the Puffin Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, and the Brooklyn Historical Society's Public Perspectives program. She is also co-curating the FIGMENT season-long sculpture garden on Governors Island in Summer 2012. Katherine has published and presented scholarly essays on community-based public art in the critically-acclaimed arts blog http://www.createquity.org, CUNY Graduate Center art history journal and NYU’s 2008 Social Theory, Politics, and Arts conference. She was a contributing editor and writer to "Street Art: San Francisco: Mission Muralismo" (Abrams, 2009). Katherine has exhibited her artwork at such venues as the Brooklyn Arts Council gallery, Brooklyn Public Library, City Without Walls in Newark, the 2010 FIGMENT season-long sculpture garden on Governors Island, and Windows Brooklyn, and was a 2008 Abbey Mural Fellow at the National Academy of Fine Arts and a 2009 CEC ArtsLink travel grantee to do public art projects in Russia.