Interim Director Named for Schneider Museum of Art

(Ashland, OR) – The Schneider Museum of Art is pleased to announce the appointment of Scott Malbaurn as the new interim Director of the Schneider Museum of Art effective July 1, 2015.  Mr. Malbaurn has a MFA degree from Pratt Institute and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art both degrees in Painting.
Mr. Malbaurn was Acting Assistant Chairperson of Fine Arts at Pratt and oversaw the undergraduate Fine Arts program in the areas of drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, jewelry and ceramics. Mr. Malbaurn also worked at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum located in Queens, NY where he worked in the Curatorial and Collections Department as well as Noguchi’s Design Department. Mr. Malbaurn has an extensive background in independent curatorial work in New York and has had his own work displayed in many professional exhibitions nationally and internationally.  Mr. Malbaurn was also co-owner and curatorial director of the H. Lewis Gallery in Baltimore, MD. This past year he taught drawing courses for Southern Oregon University.
The Schneider Museum of Art, which is part of the Oregon Center for the Arts, is going through an exciting period of development. Along with the new leadership, the Museum will create a strategic plan for a successful future. “We will be dreaming big and small”, says Mr. Malbaurn. “We will continue to do the good work set forth by our predecessors and we hope to build upon that with additional programming focused toward connecting our student and community groups. We will attempt to visualize our programs and exhibitions as a spectrum where we create a context for contemporary art that supports the well established, the mid career, and the young emerging artist from Oregon and beyond. What we do over the span of a year is what will define us.”

The Museum’s fall exhibition, Breaking Pattern is curated by the New York based team Matthew Deleget and Rosanna Martinez who run Minus Space, a gallery located in Dumbo, Brooklyn that specializes in abstract and reductive art. The exhibition highlights several generations of artists from coast to coast whose works investigate and advance the discourse around pattern, optical, and perceptual abstract painting. The exhibition will feature recent paintings by seven American artists: Gabriele Evertz, Anoka Faruqee, Michelle Grabner, Gilbert Hsiao, Douglas Melini, Brian Porray, and Michael Scott. This exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition The Responsive Eye curated by William C. Seitz.
Matthew Deleget and Rosanna Martinez are respective artists themselves and they will present a project of their own work in our Treehaven Gallery. Mr. Malbaurn explains, “More and more artists today are beginning to wear many hats, from curating to art criticism and gallery operations. This is a great example of today’s contemporary art discourse.” One of the artists in this exhibition, Michelle Grabner, was one of three curators who curated the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American art in New York, NY. Grabner was also tapped to be the upcoming curator for the Portland 2016 Biennial. Grabner also runs a successful artist project space called The Suburban in Oak Park, Illinois.
Additionally there will be a Southern Oregon Site Project installation by Tannaz Farsi, an Iranian-American artist who teaches at the University of Oregon. She is designing a living “Persian Rug” comprised of plants native to the Rogue valley. This project, funded in part by The Ford Family Foundation, Roseburg, is designed to support the development and presentation of new art by Oregon artists.
The University through the new Oregon Center for the Arts is proud of the Museum’s legacy and vision, and is committed to bringing the university and the community quality contemporary art exhibitions. The Schneider Museum’s exhibitions are complemented by FREE Family Days with creative and expressive activities, popular Tuesday Tours, artist lectures and residencies, educational programs for K-12 students, university classes, and community groups that all present opportunities to connect here at the Schneider Museum.  For more information on these programs, please visit us at sma.sou.edu.