Lauren Lake Bio
Professor Lauren Lake is currently the Chair of the Department of Studio Art at the University of North Texas. Prior to this appointment she was the Chair of the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and concurrently served as the Associate Director, Graduate Chair and Director of Graduate Studio Studies at the University of Florida School of Art and Art History.
Lake’s core values of safety, inspiration, and sustainability frames her administrative goals and leadership vision. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally in numerous exhibitions. She received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Art Education from the University of Florida.
Further professional development includes the HERS Leadership Program at Bryn Mawr College and currently she is enrolled in Cornell’s Diversity and Inclusion certificate program. Lake was the recipient of a 2014 Fellowship from both the National Council for Arts Administrators and the International Council for Fine Art Deans and received the 2007 Southeastern College Art Conference Excellence in Teaching Award.
Lauren Lake Statement
It is an honor to have been nominated to serve on the NCAA Board. Working and learning with passionate leaders through this organization is something for which I am grateful. Each year I leave the conference with a renewed sense of confidence, community and agency. As a board member, I would work to support the current goals while developing the future goals of the organization.
I believe NCAA provides opportunities for us to discuss the greatest challenges and opportunities for arts leaders today. This includes addressing issues of inclusivity, diversity, and intersectionality, as well as questioning how we as an organization can best serve our membership year-round. As a board member, I would work to help build a woman’s leadership platform within the organization to encouraging and promote the professional development of women through both formal programming and informal opportunities.
I am eager to expand the range of opportunities available to NCAA members at the conference including sessions devoted to leaders who face distinct challenges and working to provide methods of recourse for each of us. I look forward to working to better meet the ideals of all partners in our membership.
Vagner Mendonça Whitehead Bio
Vagner Mendonça Whitehead’s practice encompasses traditional and new media art, curatorial projects and creative writings on visual culture. His artworks display intersections of personal experiences, histories, technologies, current events, geo-locations, languages, and found artifacts, presented in group and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums, as well as film and video festivals, nationally and internationally. His writings unravel similar media/visual encounters in the form of critical and poetic essays. Recent art projects have dealt with aging and technological obsolescence; his most recent published essay unpacked the queering new media art as a decentralized model for leadership. Vagner’s most recent solo exhibition took place in Dundee, Scotland in 2018, during the NEoN Digital Art Festival.
This Summer, Vagner has been invited to participate in the SAVVY Arts Venture Challenge at the USC. In Summer 2017, he participated in the Leadership Institute for the National Association for Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC), being one of 28 fellows nationwide. In 2016 he was selected as a Fellow for the Advocacy Leadership Institute in Washington DC for NALAC.
Vagner has taught at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale (2001-2005), and Oakland University – Michigan (2005-2016), where he served as chair 2013-2016. He joined Texas Woman's University (TWU) in 2016 and has since served as chair of the Department of Visual Arts. At TWU, Vagner aims to empower traditionally under-represented art students and scholars in higher education by providing inclusive and equitable spaces for making and learning.
Vagner Mendonça Whitehead Statement
What I bring to the table is my great commitment to higher education as a transformative experience to all who enter it. My leadership and management training have allowed me to exercise transparency while navigating through difficult transitions. I strive to engender clear communication and empathy, and I hope that the same can occur at the NCAA Board.
We have some difficult paths to thread, ahead of us, in the academic landscape. Now, more than ever, we must (re)consider our role in advocating through the Arts. We must consciously focus on the relationship of equity with diversity and inclusion, beyond rhetorical strategic plans. While much discussion on how to decolonize our institutions (museums, departments, or curricula), most do not seem to know how to exactly enact them. We need to provide clear methods to analyze and modify our existing academic structures so that the next generation of students and colleagues more clearly resemble our nation.
Some of this work can take place during our national meetings, but they also must exist between conferences. The Emerging Arts Administrators Fellowship provides a great model for how NCAA can add diversity to our community. If we create a similar mentoring program to recruit and retain diverse faculty to academic leadership opportunities, we will greatly benefit from having access to many perspectives in our midst. I offer my service to dialogue and implement these goals.
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