Cassandra Coblentz
Title: Independent Curator
Artist Affiliation: Independent Curator
Cassandra Coblentz is the former Associate Curator for the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA). A native of Los Angeles, Cassandra has spent her career all across the country, from L.A. to New York, and her years-long focus on museum education has largely informed her practice as a contemporary curator and how she approaches exhibition-making.
Her curated projects have focused on innovative approached to engaging community audiences and producing new work with artists. Current projects include: Kirsten Everberg: Looking for Edendale and economy of means: toward humility in contemporary sculpture and managing the production of a publication for a mid-career survey of the work of Julianne Swartz. She initiated SMoCA’s Architecture + Art program. Among the many exhibitions she curated at SMoCA are Jean Shin and Brian Ripple: Unlocking, Looking Through the Other End of a Telescope (Jon Fisher and Jeff Shore, Aaron Rothman, Mungo Thomson and Jennifer West), Seriously Funny (Alejandro Diaz, Christian Jankowski, Nina Katchadorain, Martin Kersells, Arlene Shechet and others), Pae White: Lisa Bright & Dark, and Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up.
Coblentz’s professional experience also includes serving as Head of Academic Initiatives at The UCLA Hammer Museum and working in the education departments of the DIA Center for the Arts in New York and The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She received her BA in Art History and English from Cornell University and her MA from The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She lives in southern California with her family.