SACRAMENTO, CA – Last Friday, January 6, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the appointment of four new members to the California Arts Council body, and the reappointment of one member to serve a second term.

The California Arts Council consists of 11 members who set priorities and policies for the agency’s local assistance grantmaking.

“We are so excited to welcome our new Council members, and equally grateful to Governor Newsom for this extraordinary group of individuals that round out our Council body,” said California Arts Council Executive Director Jonathan Moscone. “These appointments will allow us to ring in the year with full membership and to take on the needs of California’s arts community in 2023—and beyond—with confidence, capacity, and creativity.”

Governor Newsom announced the following appointments to the California Arts Council:

New Appointments

Caleb Duarte of Fresno was born in the border town of El Paso, Texas, where his family lived in Juarez, Mexico. At the age of 4, Duarte and his family migrated from Nogales, Sonora, to the farming community of Corcoran in California. He is best known for his community collaborations in creating temporary installations using construction type frameworks such as beds of dirt, cement, and objects suggesting basic shelter. The work is produced through a situational engagement with active sites of social and cultural resistance.

Duarte has created public works at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India; Santiago de Cuba, Cuba; El Pital, Honduras; Frankfurt, Germany; Paris, France; and throughout Mexico and the United States. He has collaborated with autonomous indigenous collectives, communities in movement, families seeking asylum, and college and university students.

Duarte is co-founder, along with artist Mia Eve Rollow, of EDELO, a Spanish acronym for “Where the United Nations Used To Be.” EDELO was a house of art in movement and an international artist residency of diverse practices in Chiapas, Mexico, producing projects such as Arte urGente, The Embassy of the Refugee, Zapantera Negra and Walking the Beast.

He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is professor of Sculpture at Fresno City College in Fresno, where he has his studio.

Leah Goodwin of Imperial Beach believes that the arts are a universal tool for healing. She is the owner of Leah Goodwin Creations, “where art and soul meet.” She has a diverse background that includes strategic planning; fundraising; event, festival, and conference coordination; art and culture projects; curating gallery exhibits; and creating art master plans. Her exemplary career in the arts encompasses everything from public arts management, to visual and performing arts program development and consultation, to creation and implementation of award-winning arts in education and arts in hospital programs.

Leah has held many important leadership roles in the arts, including Director of Visual and Performing Arts at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in San Diego, and Director of Museum and Education for the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, where she presented 17 exhibitions over four years. She is a founding faculty member for RISE San Diego’s Urban Leadership Fellows Program.

In August 2015, she created the San Diego Experience of the Civil Rights Movement exhibit acknowledging the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which is on display all around San Diego. In 2019, she created and curated the 1619 Celebration of Black Women exhibit for the Women’s Museum of California.

Leah is a Fulbright Scholar and an accomplished and published poet and writer, including contributions to Teaching English Language Learners through the Arts by Merryl Goldberg and Muheres in Movement: Poems About Self-love, Activism & Community.

Nicola Miner of San Francisco is founder of the Miner Anderson Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advances social justice and access to equal opportunity in San Francisco and throughout the United States. She is also a board member of the Baker Street Foundation, which focuses on funding arts organizations in the Bay Area, and a board member of AHoM, a nonprofit focused on building affordable housing for artists in San Francisco. She is an instructor of English composition at several Bay Area community colleges. Ms. Miner is also a board member of the Presidio Trust, which manages the national park within San Francisco. She has a degree in History from Brown University, a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a master’s degree in English literature from Mills College.

Olivia Raynor of Westlake Village is the Founder/Director of the UCLA National Arts and Disability Center. She is the Director Emerita of the UCLA Tarjan Center University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute in Los Angeles. Currently, Olivia is also an independent consultant working toward a more inclusive society through innovative public policy and practice solutions. Olivia has longstanding collaborations with the National Endowment for the Arts, including the planning of two national summits, the administration of 28 Statewide Forums on Careers in the Arts for People with Disabilities, and a national online dialogue on how to increase the career preparation and employment of people with disabilities in the arts.

Dr. Raynor is past President of the Association of University Centers on Disabilities, a national network of 100 university-based programs. She previously served as a Governor-appointed member on the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities (Governors Davis and Brown). She was recognized by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles County Commission on Disabilities for her leadership in the arts. Dr. Raynor earned a Master of Arts degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Southern California and Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reappointment

Alex Israel lives and works in Los Angeles. Deeply entwined with his hometown, his work explores popular media, Hollywood, and the cult of celebrity, while positing L.A. as central to an understanding of American culture and the American dream.

His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at: Le Consortium, Dijon; The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California; the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo and Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (forthcoming). His work is included in numerous museum collections worldwide including: MoMA, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; MOCA, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and The Broad, Los Angeles.

Israel’s practice has included high-profile collaborations with Bret Easton Ellis, Louis Vuitton, Rimowa and Snapchat, as well as his own Freeway Eyewear and Infrathin Apparel designs. His ongoing web series, an LA-centric talk show hosted by the artist and titled As It Lays, is streaming on YouTube, and his feature length art film, SPF-18, is now streaming on Netflix, following a tour to high schools across the United States.

The California Arts Council will hold its next business meeting on January 27.

Media Inquiries:
Kimberly Brown
Public Affairs Specialist
kimberly.brown@arts.ca.gov

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The California Arts Council is a state agency with a mission of strengthening arts, culture, and creative expression as the tools to cultivate a better California for all. It supports local arts infrastructure and programming statewide through grants, initiatives, and services. The California Arts Council envisions a California where all people flourish with universal access to and participation in the arts.

Members of the California Arts Council include: Consuelo Montoya, Chair; Vicki Estrada, Vice Chair; Gerald Clarke; Caleb Duarte; Ellen Gavin; Leah Goodwin; Alex Israel; Phil Mercado; Roxanne Messina Captor; Nicola Miner; and Olivia Raynor. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov.

The California Arts Council is committed to increasing the accessibility of its online content. For language and accessibility assistance, visit https://arts.ca.gov/about/about-us/language-communications-assistance. To read this announcement in Spanish, please use the website’s Google Translate tool by clicking the “Translate” link in the upper righthand corner of this page.

El Consejo de las Artes de California se compromete a aumentar la accesibilidad de sus contenidos en línea. Para obtener ayuda con el idioma y la accesibilidad, visite https://arts.ca.gov/about/about-us/language-communications-assistance. Para leer este anuncio en español, utilice la herramienta Google Translate del sitio web haciendo clic en el enlace “Traducir” situado en la esquina superior derecha de esta página.