Board Members
Ray Beldner
Born in San Francisco, Beldner received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and his work can be found in many public and private collections including the Federal Reserve Board, Washington D.C., the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Museum of California, and the San Jose Museum of Art.
Beldner is a 1996 recipient of a California Arts Council Fellowship in New Genres, a 1997 recipient of a Creative Work Fund Grant from the Haas Foundations, and a 1999 recipient of a Potrero Nuevo environmental art grant. He has taught sculpture and interdisciplinary studies at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of the Arts, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, CA.

Matthew Jackson
Matthew Jesse Jackson's interests revolve around the continuing relevance of the historical and neo-avant-garde in our post–September 11th world. He is currently at work on several interconnected projects: editing a catalogue raisonné of Ilya Kabakov's paintings, editing and translating a volume of Kabakov's theoretical writings, as well as completing a monograph devoted to the history of late Soviet art. He is currently assistant professor of Visual Arts and Art History at the University of Chicago. MPhil, Columbia University; PhD University of California, Berkeley.

Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson
Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson is the Director and Chief Curator of the Aspen Art Museum, appointed in 2005. Her upcoming projects include one-person exhibitions with Simon Evans, Yutaka Sone, Javier Tellez, and Pedro Reyes.
From 1999-2005 she was the Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, where she curated more then forty solo exhibitions of international contemporary artists such as Peter Doig, Tobias Rehberger, Shirin Neshat, Teresita Fernández, Julie Mehretu, Doug Aitken, Tacita Dean, Wolfgang Laib, Ernesto Neto, Simryn Gill, Sanford Biggers, and T.J. Wilcox. She also produced a digital videodisc documenting the 1999-2000 MATRIX season in which the artists are represented by visual walkthroughs of their exhibitions, as well as excerpts from their artist's talks and interviews with MATRIX Curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson. Formerly she was the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Art at The Jewish Museum, New York, appointed in 1993, and curated "Light x Eight: The Hanukkah Project,""Contemporary Artist Project: Kristin Oppenheim," and "Louis I. Kahn Drawings: Synagogue Projects" which traveled to The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Ms. Zuckerman Jacobson has lectured extensively on contemporary art, independently curated exhibitions internationally, and served in numerous advisory capacities at The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, The Joan Mitchell Foundation, Creative Capital, and The Art Council, among others. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her MA from CUNY/Hunter College, New York where she wrote her thesis on video art. She is a graduate of Christie's Education and received a diploma from the Royal Society of Art, London. Zuckerman Jacobson has taught at UC Berkeley, CUNY Hunter College, and is on the faculty of CCA as a professor in the Masters of Curatorial Studies program.

Stephan Jost
Stephan Jost is the director of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont and the former director of the Mills College Art Museum.
Jost majored in art history at Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. He has a master's degree in art history from the University of Texas, with a specialty in the history of photography. He has a particular interest in contemporary art and produced roughly 20 special exhibitions per year during his tenure at the Mills College art museum.

Carol Ladewig
Oakland based painter Carol Ladewig is the Executive Director of the Oakland Art Gallery, an independent exhibition space located in Oakland, CA.  The Oakland Art Gallery is focused on exhibiting the richness and diversity of art made within the Oakland/Bay Area as well as bringing to Oakland contemporary art from national and international artists.  Ms. Ladewig is responsible for developing the gallery’s programming concepts, selection of artists and the presentation of their works, as well as overseeing the installation of each gallery exhibition. 
Ladewig received a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from the California College of Arts and Crafts and a Bachelors degree in Art and Design from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sue Mark
Oakland-based cultural researcher, creates public interdisciplinary projects in both the US and the former Eastern Europe region. Her research-based projects cross boundaries between linguistics, urban design, sociology, history, and art. Exploration of the complexity of implicit power and social relationships is embedded within her research: Who controls public space and what sense of responsibility do community members feel toward one another?
In collaboration with Bruce Douglas, environmentalist and engineer, marksearch is currently undertaking an ecotourist adventure (WE Riders) in Oakland to culturally and geographically locate West and East Oakland. Sue Mark is also writing an epistolary narrative about her six years’ work in Bulgaria.
Sue Mark has received project support from the American/Bulgarian Fulbright Commission, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, San Francisco Art Commission, Oakland Cultural Funding Program, Czech Center for Contemporary Art, Dresden Cultural Commission and Culture 2000 Program, European Union. She has presented her work in New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Dresden, Germany, Sofia, Bulgaria, Prague, The Czech Republic and Norway. She has received awards from the California College of Arts and Crafts and has been granted residencies by the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and The Djerassi Resident Artists Program.
She received a BA in philosophy with a focus on linguistics and semiotics from Oberlin College and an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts.

Cheryl Meeker
For 15 years, Cheryl Meeker has produced collaborative and individual work in a variety of media and contexts. She has exhibited work at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Gallery 16, the Oakland Art Museum, Blackbird Space, Refusalon, and as a part of the L7 Group intervention. Having collaborated for a time with CALF, the Coalition of Artists and Life Forms, she became a co-founder and is currently a co-publisher for Stretcher, an online art and culture publication. Her most recent collaborations with Dan Spencer, "Dan and Cheryl at Home in the Green Studio", were produced as part of Stretcher's recent exhibitions, and as part of Stretcher's "Green Room" exhibition series in Bay Area Now 4 at YBCA. Meeker has appeared as a visiting artist in classes at California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Evergreen College, and has taught as an independent study instructor at CCA and with Stretcher at University of California Berkeley Extension. Meeker's writing has been published in Stretcher, Art Papers, and on Marjorie Wood Gallery, an online art gallery. Meeker studied liberal arts at the University of Oregon and received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Lisa Melandri
Lisa Melandri is Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA). She received her BA in Fine Arts/Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College in 1993 and her MA in art history from Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art in 1997.
At SMMoA Melandri has organized a number of exhibitions as well as managing oversight of the museum's infrastructure and exhibition/education program. She is co-curator with Michael Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for the upcoming exhibition " Enigma Variations: Philip Guston and Giorgio de Chirico," and organized the exhibition, " Rosamond Purcell: Two Rooms" (2003), which is still touring nationally. She also curates the Project Series at SMMoA, and has featured exhibitions of the work of such artists as Abby Donovan, Kota Ezawa, Roger Herman, Virgil Marti, Adrian Meraz, and Hugh Pocock.
Prior to her position at SMMoA, she served as Interim Co-Director of the Galleries at Moore, Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2001 and as the Curator of the Levy Gallery for the Arts in Philadelphia at the Galleries at Moore from 1998 to 2000, where she organized exhibitions of regional, national, and international artists. Along with her work at SMMoA, Melandri has served as an independent curator and writer for a number of projects.

Maria Porges
Maria Porges is an artist, writer, and curator living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1979. She holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University (1975) and a master's degree from the University of Chicago (1979). She has taught and lectured at many institutions, including Stanford University, the San Francisco Art Institute, Art Center in Pasadena, California State Universities at Los Angeles, San Jose, Sonoma and San Francisco, the University of California at Davis and at Berkeley, California College of the Arts, the Cranbrook Academy, the Ceramic College at Alfred University, Tulane University, and the University of Illinois at Champaign.
She received the John McCarron Grant for New Writing in Art Criticism in 1988, and an Individual Artist's Grant in sculpture from the California Arts Council in 1990. In 1992, she won the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award from the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. In 1994 and 2002, she was an Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Her writings on art, artists, culture, and contemporary life have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Contemporanea, Art Issues, Artweek, Sculpture, Shift, the New York Times Book Review, Artspace, American Ceramics, American Craft, Visions, Glass, Neuesglas, and various other regional and national publications.
Solo exhibitions of Porges’ artworks include the SECA Award show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1992), as well as shows at the Church Gallery at the University of Nevada, Reno (1994); John Berggruen Gallery (1995, 1997, 2000, 2003); Littlejohn Contemporary, NY (2003); David Beitzel Gallery, NY (2000); Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans (1996, 1998); Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago (1999, 2002); Terrain Gallery (1992, 1993); Intersection for the Arts (1991); and Southern Exposure Gallery (1989). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions locally and nationally. She is represented by John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago and Littlejohn Contemporary in New York.
Porges' curating projects include "The New Narratology: Examining the Narrative in Image-Text Art." This exhibition of the work of younger artists working in a variety of media traveled during 1989-90 from San Francisco to three other venues across the country, and was accompanied by a catalogue, panels, symposia, and lectures. In 1991, she curated "Image/ Object/ Place", an exhibition of installation-based photography, for the Oliver Art Center at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1994, she curated "Wunderkammer", a show of glass sculpture based on the historical concept of an eccentric, personal museum, at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco. In 1997, she curated "The New Traditionalists," a group show of artists whose work draws on either the technique or content of Old Master painting, at the University Art Museum in Eugene, Oregon.

Allen Spore
Allen Spore is an artist and private investor living in the San Francisco Area.   He is an MFA graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute and a MBA graduate of the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, California.   Spore's artistic work centers on exploration of community through a series of portrait projects in various communities throughout the United States.   His work has been shown at the Bedford Gallery, Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California; the Carson City Arts Initiative Gallery in Carson City, Nevada and the Hippodrome Gallery in Julesburg, Colorado. Spore has served on numerous non-profit boards including Southern Exposure, Sixth Street Photography Workshop and the Ansel Adams Center.   Spore's private investment practice involves trading of complex options contracts.  

Marcia Tanner
Marcia Tanner is a Bay Area-based independent curator and writer.  
The former director of the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Tanner began her curatorial career after working as a writer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, in public relations and fund raising at Stanford University, and as Director of Public Relations at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  
Tanner organized the controversial exhibition Bad Girls West at UCLA's Wight Art Gallery in 1994. Her most recent project was Brides of Frankenstein , an exhibition of work by women artists who use contemporary technologies to animate synthetic creatures, presented at the San Jose Museum of Art from August 31 - October 30, 2005. Previous exhibitions include Shadow Play and Location Location at the San Jose ICA; We Look and See: Images of Childhood in Contemporary American Photography at the Berkeley Art Museum; Tom Marioni: Trees and Birds at Mills College Art Museum; Mi Casa es Su Casa at the Noga Gallery in Tel Aviv, Israel; Aural Sex at the Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco; Dromology: Ecstasies of Speed , and LifeLike at New Langton Arts in San Francisco; and Lineaments of Gratified Desire at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, February 2004.  
Tanner is the author of numerous reviews, articles, and catalogue essays, most recently for Gail Wight and Sandow Birk. Her writings on art have appeared in Art+Text , Artweek , LIMN Magazine, VISIONS Quarterly, ArtNews , the San Francisco Chronicle , stretcher.org, and other publications.

Peter E.V. Allen
A Bay Area native, Peter E.V. Allen has a BA from UC Santa Cruz, a JD (cum laude) from the University of San Diego School of Law, and attended California College of Arts and Crafts.  As a concept-driven artist, he has worked in variety of forms and mediums, including photography, block printing, sculpture, installation, and performance.  He has been an artist-in-residence at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2004) and at the Arad Arts Project in Arad, Israel (1996-1997), and his work has been shown at the Office/Gallery and the Oakland Museum of California.  As an attorney, Allen has worked in the areas of securities litigation, criminal prosecution, environmental law, utility regulation, and mediation. He has taught at the National Judicial College, and is currently an Administrative Law Judge with the California Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco.

Sarah Lockhart
Sarah Lockhart is a media artist and arts administrator, as well as an Enrolled Agent, a tax professional licensed by the IRS. Lockhart serves as the Treasurer of the Board of Directors of 21 Grand Arts Group Inc., is th
e Business Manager for the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and works as a bookkeeper and tax preparer for individual artists, arts organizations and small businesses. Sarah Lockhart is also the founder of Fine Art Investment Concepts, an innovative new company engaged in multi-level marketing avant-garde art.

Diane Shields
A Bay-area resident for twenty years, Diane Shields combines art and horticultural science as an aesthetic pruner of ornamental trees in the urban context, creating living, sculptural art that changes, matures and evolves. A retired dance-artist, she received a BFA from the University of Arizona in Dance, then moved to San Francisco, choreographing and performing in the Bay Area for fifteen years. Shields was a founding member of the dance/theater company SQUAD, receiving an artistic residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in 2000. She also has her own practice as a certified tax preparer/consultant for artists and other self-employed people.

Beth Lisick
Beth Lisick has been an integral and high-profile member of San Francisco's arts community for the past ten years. A weekly columnist for the SF Gate (the website of the San Francisco Chronicle), a contributor to public radio's This American Life, a spoken word performer, a sketch comedian, a musician, an independent film actor, and the curator of a successful storytelling series, Lisick lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and son.