Grace Kook-Anderson

Grace Kook-Anderson was appointed The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art in 2017. At the Portland Art Museum she is responsible for the Northwest Art Collection and Galleries, the APEX exhibition series, and the regional survey, most recently entitled, the map is not the territory (2019). The APEX series features solo exhibitions and projects of contemporary northwest artists. APEX artists include Sam Hamilton (2017), Dawn Cerny (2017), Hannah Piper Burns (2018), Avantika Bawa (2018), Steven Young Lee (2019), Laura Fritz (2019), Ed Bereal (2020), and Sharita Towne (2021). Kook-Anderson has focused on presenting works from the Museum’s permanent collection of northwest art to form thematic exhibits including Picturing Oregon (2017-2019), Portraiture from the Collection of Northwest Art (in collaboration with artist Storm Tharp) (2019-current), and Isaka Shamsud-Din: Rock of Ages (2019-current). Kook-Anderson was the coordinating curator for Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott, organized by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati before traveling to the Portland Art Museum (2020-2021).

Prior to joining the museum, she was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art in the School of Art + Design at Portland State University while working as an independent curator and arts writer. From 2008-2015, Kook-Anderson was the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Laguna Art Museum. Highlights of her tenure at Laguna Art Museum include a site-specific commission, An Elongated Now by Lita Albuquerque, for the museum’s 2nd Art & Nature festival (2014). Kook-Anderson curated Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971 in conjunction with Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Initiative, and produced the accompanying award-winning catalog (2011). Kook-Anderson received a dual B.A. degree in art history and art practice from the University of California, Berkeley, and received her M.A. degree in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has held prior positions at the Asian Art Museum and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco.