Dear Fine Arts Faculty and Staff,
I write to share the news that Visual Arts Center Director MacKenzie Stevens will be stepping down from that position, effective Aug. 31. She and her family are returning to the Bay Area to be near family.
MacKenzie has been a key continuity figure during the pandemic crisis. She’s maintained activity and focus and developed good relationships and curatorial programs with support from major national foundations and local stakeholders.
Alongside the VAC’s regular program of student exhibitions, she’s cultivated a significant expansion of the quality of exhibitions that we advance in our spaces. Most recently, MacKenzie co-curated Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil with Associate Professor Adele Nelson and brought an incredible slate of Brazilian artists and their work to the Forty Acres. This exhibition also spurred significant partnerships with UT’s Brazil Center and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies.
Under MacKenzie’s direction, the Visual Arts Center has increased its exhibition publications, and later this year, they will release a catalog for Social Fabric, as well as artist Lisa Lapinski’s monograph. The Social Fabric catalog includes important contributions by graduate students in the Art History program.
MacKenzie has also partnered with important institutions such as Ballroom Marfa, the Frac Bretagne and Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain. And she’s worked to expand important partnerships with research centers and departments on campus, such as Art Galleries Black Studies, the Brazil Center, Texas Archeological Research Laboratories and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, to name a few.
What starts here changes the world, and multiple shows that opened in the Visual Arts Center have gone on to other venues across the country. Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas: The Blessings of the Mystery, which was produced in partnership with Ballroom Marfa, premiered at the VAC before touring to UT El Paso, Ballroom Marfa and MOMA. Joey Fauerso: Wait for It traveled to the University Art Museum at New Mexico State University after its debut in our own galleries, and Bill Morrison: Cycles & Loops will travel to Colby College later this summer.
MacKenzie will be working remotely through the end of August, and we are working on an interim appointment for the fall while we open a search for the position. Please join me in thanking MacKenzie for her excellent work leading the Visual Arts Center. We wish her and her family all the best as they begin this next chapter.
Sincerely,
