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Pioneering Art and Ecology Curator to Speak at UA

Patricia Watts

Pioneering curator Patricia Watts will give a public lecture, “Some Kind of Nature: Art and Ecology,” on Wednesday, October 12, 2022, at 5:30 p.m. in Garland Hall 203 on The University of Alabama campus.

Patricia Watts has worked as an art curator focused on art and ecology for over twenty-five years. In her lecture, she will offer a brief history of artists who have addressed environmental issues from the late 1960s, to current examples of how contemporary artists are partnering with communities and environmental groups to address water issues. She has engaged with hundreds of artists and has curated more than thirty nature-based exhibitions. She is the founder and curator of ecoartspace, a membership platform for artists and scientists based in the United States and from 26 other countries. Since 2021, she has placed almost thirty billboards for an ongoing exhibition titled I AM WATER. Another project, Performative Ecologies, examined the role of ritual for artists working in and with the natural world. The exhibition included video documentation and artifacts resulting from performative works dating from 1971 to 2019 by eleven women artists.

Scan the QR code to read an interview with Patricia Watts (PDF)

Other projects Watts has worked on include Contemplating OTHER (2018), Enchantment (2016), FiberSHED (2015), Shifting Baselines (2013), MAKE:CRAFT (2010), and Hybrid Fields (2006). In 2016 she initiated and project-managed a site-specific permanent public artwork entitled Cloud House. Learn more about Watts and her work at http://patriciawatts.blogspot.com and www.ecoartspace.org.

Patricia Watts has served as the consulting curator for the Marin Community Foundation in Novato, California; chief curator for the Sonoma County (California) Museum; Watershed/Education coordinator in Topanga, California; director of the nonprofit Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and associate curator of the Museum of Creativity in Santa Monica, California. She received the MA from California State University, Fullerton, in a unique entrepreneurial exhibit design/museum studies studio program with an emphasis on curating and arts administration. She holds a certificate in art appraisal from New York University School of Professional Studies and a BA in business administration from Stephens College.

Patricia Watts’ lecture is part of the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Alabama. To see our past and future visiting artists and scholars, go here: https://art.ua.edu/resources/visiting-artists/.  

To find out more about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, visit our Degree Programs page.