Amy Sadao is a contemporary art curator and nonprofit consultant who was director of the
Institute of Contemporary Art in
Philadelphia from September 2012 to September 2019.
Sadao was executive director of Visual AIDS in New York City prior to her appointment to the ICA directorship. She has been known to engage diverse communities and to center art around the contemporary social and political issues across the globe.
Biography
Born in California in 1971, Sadao grew up in
Huntington Beach, California
Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County, California, Orange County in Southern California, located southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. The city is named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 duri ...
.
She received her BFA from the
Cooper Union School of Art
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...
in 1995 and an MA in comparative ethnic studies from the
University of California, Berkeley in 2000.
Career
Sadao began her career in museums as a curatorial intern at the
Whitney Museum of American Art.
At the Whitney museum, she worked with curator,
Thelma Golden
Thelma Golden (born 1965 in St. Albans, Queens) is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. Golden joined the Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding ...
.
Sadao was the executive director of
Visual AIDS Visual AIDS is an art organization based in New York City. Started in 1988, it is one of the first initiatives to record the impact of the AIDS pandemic on the artistic community. Art institutions and AIDS-related communities co-developed projects l ...
in New York City for ten years, from 2002 through 2012.
During her time at Visual AIDS, she increased outreach and expanded available resources surrounding HIV/AIDS to encourage discussion and support of HIV+ artists. In June 2012, she became the Director of the
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).
University of Pennsylvania President
Amy Gutmann and Provost
Vincent Price announced her appointment to a directorship named for Daniel W. Dietrich II, honoring his substantial financial gift in 2005. In 2015, he also gave a US$10 million endowment to the university in support of its curatorial program and to help bring artists to Philadelphia. Describing her as "a leader of unparalleled energy and vision", Gutmann commented, "She has an especially strong commitment to forging collaborations across a wide range of diverse communities and placing art at the center of dialogue about the most significant intellectual, political, and social issues of the contemporary world."
Price said, "I have been particularly impressed by her understanding of the role of art in a research university – and in catalyzing intellectual and interdisciplinary inquiry in general – as well as by the knowledge she brings of Penn and Philadelphia."
She was elected to the board of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council in 2015.
Awards
* 2014: ''ArtTable'' New Leadership Awards
References
External links
Oral History Interview with Amy Sadao, Executive Director, Visual AIDS September 10, 2010, Art Spaces Archives Project
Amy Sadao on ''Imagine Otherwise'' podcast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sadao, Amy
University of Pennsylvania staff
Cooper Union alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
1971 births
Living people