Directory Profile

Ken Gonzales-Day

Professor of Art; Fletcher Jones Chair in Art
Art
Phone: 74436
kday@scrippscollege.edu

Biography

Ken Gonzales-Day's interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. The Searching for California Hang Trees series offered a critical look at the legacies of landscape photography in the West while his most recent project considers the sculptural depiction of race. Profiled began as an exploration of the influence of eighteenth century "scientific" thought on twenty-first century institutions ranging from the museum to the prison. The series includes photographs from the sculpture and portrait bust collections of several major museums including: The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Field Museum in Chicago, The Museum of Man in San Diego, L'École des beaux-arts in Paris, The Bode Museum in Berlin, Park Sanssouci in Potsdam, The National Museum of Natural History in Paris, among others. Gonzales-Day lives in Los Angeles.

Academic History

  • 1995- present Professor, Art Department, Scripps College, Claremont, CA.
  • Chair: Art Department, 2006-2008, 2009-2014
  • Chair, Art and Art History, 2003- 2006
  • B.F.A., Painting (Art History Minor), Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York
  • M.A., Art History, City University of New York, New York, New York
  • M.F.A., Studio Art, University of California, Irvine

Academic Focus

Art, Art Criticism, Art Theory, Photography, Scripps Humanities Core Program, Race and Racial Formation

Interests

Photography, Art History, Contemporary Art

Courses Taught

  • Art 145: Introduction to Black and White Photography
  • Art 146: Intermediate and Advanced Black and White Photography
  • Art 143: Intermediate and Advance Digital Photography
  • Core I: Histories of the Present
  • Core III: The Mechanical Eye

Selected Research and Publications

Solo Exhibitions

2015

  • "Run Up" Luis de Jesus Los Angeles, LA CA , Apr 2 -May 9

2012

  • "Profiled | Hang Trees | Portraits," Luis de Jesus Los Angeles, LA, CA
  • "Profiled," Gallerie Steph, Singapore
  • "Disappearing into the Trees," Vincent Price Art Museum

2011

  • "Profiled," Fred Torres Collaborations, NY
  • "Profiled," Tufts University Art Gallery
  • "Profiled" Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles
  • "Silent Witness: Recent works by KGD," UCSD

Monographs

  • Ken Gonzales-Day, Profiled (LACMA, 2011)
  • Ken Gonzales-Day, Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke, 2006)

Awards and Honors

Fellowships and grants include:

Chercheur Accueilli, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA); COLA Individual Artist Award; Art Mattes Grant; Mid-Career Award, California Community Foundation; Durfee Fondation ACG; Graves Award for the Humanities; Visiting Scholar/Artist-in-Residence, Getty Research Institute; Senior Fellow, American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution; Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy; Van Lier Fellow, ISP, Whitney Museum of American Art; Rotary International, 2017 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography.