The McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, North Carolina, has named Nicole J. Caruth as its new artistic director, beginning December 1.
Caruth comes to the McColl Center from the Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, where she is director of pedagogy and public practice. Prior to that, she held positions at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, ART21, and the Brooklyn Museum.
A writer and curator, Caruth has contributed to such publications as Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Public Art Review, and the Phaidon Press volumes Vitamin Green and Vitamin D2, and exhibition catalogues published by the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She earned her bachelor’s degree in art history at San Francisco State University, and her master’s degree at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies in upstate New York.
Among the exhibitions she has curated is “The Grace Jones Project,” which closed last month at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. It featured works by such artists as Wangechi Mutu, Simone Leigh, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Jacolby Satterwhite.
Caruth is also the founder of With Food in Mind, a nonprofit that develops art-based approaches to childhood obesity and nutrition in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. She has written extensively about food in contemporary art for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture and others.
