Miriam Grottanelli de Santi, Director Half British and half Italian, Miriam grew up in Siena, studied in Cambridge, UK, and lived and worked in Paris, Prague, Florence and Rome before deciding that Siena is by far the best place where to live. She came back to set up study-abroad course offerings that she felt would give the 'right' social and academic experience to American undergrads.Having founded the Siena School for Liberal Arts in 2004, she is excited to now be part of the inauguration of the Siena Art Institute.
Lisa Nonken, Academic Director( info@sienaart.org ) Lisa received her MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Sculpture from the Lyme Academy of Fine Art, and her BA from Mount Holyoke College. Lisa is an American artist who first came to Siena in 2008 as an Art Instructor for the Siena School for Liberal Arts. In 2010 she returned to Siena to help launch the Siena Art Institute. She is passionate about art education and exploring the intersection of art and civic life. Lisa’s multi-disciplinary artistic practice includes her work in sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, and photography, and she has exhibited in Italy and the US. She is the current Academic Director at the Siena Art Institute and serves as a Professor of Fine Arts, co-teaching the interdisciplinary Art and Society Seminar. She also teaches a Drawing course offered through the Siena School for Liberal Arts, the partner program of the Siena Art Institute. Lisa has exhibited both in the US and Italy, and has been awarded resiencies at Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Blue Sky Project. Awards include the REMET “Shaping the Future” Project Grant, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. www.sienaart.org/lisa-nonken.html
Jane South, Associate Director( jane@sienaart.org ) Jane South is an artist based in New York who assists in the development of the Siena Art Institute’s Academic and Visiting Artist Programs, introduces SART to colleges, universities, foundations and organizations in the US and abroad and fosters these relationships in order to bring accomplished and talented artists, writers and students to work and study in Siena. A British-born artist with a BA from Central/St. Martins, London and an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, South has exhibited widely and her work has been reviewed and published in The New York Times, the LA Times, ArtForum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, New York Magazine, Frieze, Art News and NY Arts Magazine. Jane South has lectured, taught, and served as artist in residence in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, Australia and India. She currently teaches in the Graduate Sculpture Department at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the United States.www.janesouth.com
Anya Maslack, Student Life Coordinator, in collaboration with the Siena School for Liberal Arts, ( studentlife@sienaart.org ) A 2007 alum of the Siena School, Anya graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2008 with a degree in Anthropology and promptly returned to Siena, as she couldn't imagine another place she would rather live. Anya is an excellent for our students, leading applicants through the complexities of the Visa application process, overseeing student life issues and serving as a liaison between our program and our home-stay families.
Catherine Pierattini, Program Assistant (sustainability@sienaschool.com ) Catherine has avidly studied the Italian language both via the Siena School for Liberal Arts's summer program in 2009 and through Middlebury College. Though she spent a year in Florence with Middlebury, she always found that Siena felt like home and returned after graduating from Oberlin College in 2012. As the newest member of the staff, she is excited to be working both with the Siena Art Institute and our partner program, the Siena School for Liberal Arts.
Christine Brown, Deaf and ASL Programs Coordinator ( christine@sienaart.org ) Christine received her BA from Mount Holyoke College, and her masters degree from Gallaudet University. Christine works to organize our program offerings for Deaf students and artists. During the spring and summer sessions she works on-site in our Siena office, and during the fall she works to promote our programs in the U.S.
Simone Signorini, Siena Art Institute Onlus President A native of SIena, Simone serves as the President of the Siena Art Institute and works in close contact with the organization's advisory board. Simone is a trained musician and orchestra director and enjoys sharing his passion for music through presentations and the development of collaborative programming.
Advisory Board Members:
Gyöngy Laky, Prof Emeritus of Art, University of California, Davis Sculptor, San Francisco, CA USA
Born in Budapest, Hungary, sculptor Gyöngy Laky resides in San Francisco, California. She is Professor emeritus, University of California, Davis, where she chaired the Department of Art in the mid-1990's. Laky exhibits and is in museum collections in the US and abroad. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was commissioned by the U.S. Federal Art-in-Architecture Program for the Social Security Administration Building in Richmond, CA, as well as by the City of Sacramento, CA. In 2002-03, she and two others developed an Arts Master Plan for the new 130-acre U.S. Federal Food and Drug Administration campus in Maryland. The Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley (where she studied), published her oral history. Her papers and documents are in the collection of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Her work is in several permanent collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian's Renwick Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Central Museum of Textiles in Poland, Savaria Museum in Hungary and Paisley Museum in Scotland, among others. Internationally, her work has been exhibited in France, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Hungary, Lithuania, Colombia, the Philippines and China (with one-person exhibitions in Spain, Denmark and England). She is also known for her outdoor site-specific installations which have occurred in the US, Canada, England, France, Austria and Bulgaria. A Laky artwork is currently in an exhibition of the U.S. Federal Art in Embassies Program at the NATO Ambassador's residence in Belgium. Her work is included in over 40 books. www.gyongylaky.com
Robert C. Morgan, Adjunct Prof of Fine Arts, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY & Prof Emeritus of Art History, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA Art Critic, Artist, Poet, Curator, Art Historian, New York City, USA Robert C. Morgan is an internationally renowned art critic, curator, artist, writer, art historian, poet, and lecturer. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1975), and a Ph.D. in contemporary art history from the School of Education, New York University (1978). Dr. Morgan lives in New York, where he lectures at the School of Visual Arts and is Adjunct Professor in the graduate fine arts department at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He is Professor Emeritus in Art History from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Robert Morgan is the author of some 2000 essays and reviews, and is contributing editor to Sculpture Magazine, Asian Art News, The Brooklyn Rail, and New York correspondent for Art Press (Paris). His books include Conceptual Art: An American Perspective (McFarland, 1994), Art into Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Between Modernism and Conceptual Art (McFarland, 1997), The End of the Art World (Allworth, 1998), Gary Hill (Johns Hopkins, 2000), Bruce Nauman (Johns Hopkins, 2002), Clement Greenberg: Late Writings (University of Minnesota, 2003), Vasarely (Braziller, 2004), and The Artist and Globalization (Lodz, 2008). His writings are translated into 17 languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Serbian, Hebrew, Farsi, and Finnish.
Since 1979, Dr. Morgan has curated over 70 exhibitions in the various museums, cultural spaces, and galleries in the United States and abroad. In New York, Dr. Morgan curated “Logo Non Logo” (with Pierre Restany, Thread Waxing Space, 1994), “The Sign of Paradise” for Mike Weiss Gallery (2005), “Neutral” (2005) for the Lab Gallery, “Silent Exile” for 2 X 13 Gallery (2006), "The Optical Edge" for Pratt Manhattan Gallery (2007), and “Hong-wen Lin” for the Taipei Cultural Center (2009).
Robert Morgan was the first recipient of the Arcale awarded in international art criticism in Salamanca, Spain (1999) and the first Critic-in-Residence at the Art Omi International Artists Workshop (1992) in Ghent, New York. He had been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1980, 1986, 1987), a Rockefeller/NEA grant (1988), and a Francis Greenburger Fellowship (1993). In 2005, he was awarded an Edward Albee Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship as a senior scholar to research “The Traditional Arts and the Korean Avant-garde” in the Republic of Korea. In 2008, he received a research grant from the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy. He has been invited to lecture at several Biennials and Art Fairs, including Gwangju (2000, 2004), Shanghai (2002), Lodz (2004, 2006), Asian Conemporary Art Fair (2006, 2008), Tehran Sculpture Biennial, the Islamic Republic of Iran (2007), Singapore Art Fair (2008), and Istanbul Biennial (2009).
As an artist, he has shown in many solo and group exhibitions. They include the ICA, Boston (1972), The Whitney Museum of American Art (1976), Franklin Furnace, NYC (1976), Artists Space, NYC (1976, 1977), McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina (1980), White Columns (1983), Printed Matter (1984), Cologne Art Fair (1990), Antoine Candau, Paris (1990), Eric Stark Gallery (1992), Construction in Process, Lodz (1993), Nine Gallery, Gwangju (2006), Gaya-Fusion. Ubud, (Republic of Indonesia (2006), Amelia Wallace Gallery, SUNY Old Westbury (2007), Wooster Art Space (2007), Bjorn Ressle, NYC (2009), Sideshow, Brooklyn (2009), and The Lab Gallery, NYC (2009). His work has been reviewed by Art in America, The New York Times, Arforum, Art News, The Brooklyn Rail, artcritical.com, art.net, and Wolgan Misool (Korea). His works are included in several public and private collections. www.robertcmorgan.com
