Sarah Cunningham
Art Gallery Director
Biography
Faculty Bio
Sarah Cunningham is an academic gallery director and teaching artist. Her career is unified by the conviction that art is an essential part of society that creates dialogue and exposes us to new ideas. Cunningham has curated over 50 contemporary art exhibitions including rafa esparza: for you and the sky, Devon Tsuno: Urban Reclamation, Inherited Traits: Nina Katchadourian and Heidi Kumao, Digestive Systems, featuring EcoArtTech, Maria McKinney, and Dana Sherwood, and Simonette Quamina: The Night Gardener. In August 2019, she began a new position as the founding art gallery director and assistant clinical professor of curatorial studies at Pace University (NY). Cunningham previously served as the director of the Atkinson Gallery in the Art Department at Santa Barbara City College (CA), where she taught Visual Literacy and Exhibition Practices courses, and the director of the College of New Jersey Art Gallery, where she taught Conceptual Art and Collecting Culture. To complement and extend her curatorial practice, Cunningham is an experienced gallery educator trained in the Visual Thinking Strategies. Additionally, she has taught art workshops including puppet construction, bookmaking, mosaics, and photography for many educational organizations including the International Charter School (RI), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MN), the East Side Arts Council (MN) and Matsuoka Jr. High School (Japan). Committed to social change through the arts, Cunningham also served as the neighborhood artist-in-residence at the Woonsocket Neighborhood Development Corporation (RI) for three years working with teens to create art and history projects that reflected and honored their own communities including an exhibit for the Museum of Work and Culture and a walking tour for the National Parks Service. She received her BA in American Studies from Tufts University and her MFA in Art Photography from Syracuse University.
Courses Taught
Past Courses
ART 176: Visual Literacy
ART 180: Intro to Museum & Curatrl Stds
ART 215: New York and the Visual Arts
Publications and Presentations
Presentations
Recalibrated Compass: Creating a Humanities, Art and Computing (HAC) Minor at Pace University
Kreitz, K. A., Cunningham, S. B. & Cotoranu, A. (2023). HASTAC: Critical Making and Social Justice. .