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From 2019 to 2026, I was founding director of publications at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, where my titles included the best seller Hayao Miyazaki, AIGA 50 covers winner John Waters: Pope of Trash, and the celebrated survey Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971.
I’m cofounder (with Thomas Lawson) and former executive editor of East of Borneo, a collaborative online magazine of contemporary art and its history as considered from Los Angeles. We launched in 2010 with support from the Getty Foundation, CalArts, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In 2012, we introduced East of Borneo Books with Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader, the first collection of writings by California architectural historian and critic Esther McCoy (1904–1989).
I was associate editor/US managing editor of Afterall, a transatlantic journal of contemporary art and film copublished by CalArts, Central Saint Martins, and MuHKA Antwerp, from 2007 to 2010.
I’ve organized exhibitions, workshops, screenings, and talks in Los Angeles and beyond. Some favorites include a pop-up newsstand project in Culver City, an art-and-food–themed fundraiser with Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Gold, and a three-week rooftop sci-fi film series at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.
I have an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My writing has appeared in frieze, Afterall, Modern Painters, and other art magazines.
AIGA 50 Covers
John Waters: Pope of Trash
Association of Art Museum Curators Award for Excellence
Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association
Hayao Miyazaki (finalist)
Kraszna-Krausz Book Award
Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema (longlist)
Booktique Award
Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971 (finalist)
Graphis Design Award
Hayao Miyazaki (honorable mention)
INVITED PROGRAMS AND TALKS
Art Los Angeles Contemporary
California African American Museum
California College of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
Getty Museum
Getty Research Institute
Greene Exhibitions
Hammer Museum
Hauser and Wirth
Honor Fraser Gallery
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
LACMA
Los Angeles Review of Books
MAK Center
Machine Project
Margaret Herrick Library
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
n+1
Photo LA
REDCAT
Roma Art Fair
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
School of Visual Arts
Sonos
USC Libraries
Vincent Price Art Museum
Armory Center for the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University
Clockshop
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
Japanese American National Museum
Kunsthall Stavanger
Los Angeles County Arts Commission
Machine Project
Marciano Art Foundation
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Oakwood School
Oneida Indian Nation
Park Pictures
RADAR, Inc.
Study of the US Institutes
X Artists Books
MISC. PRESS
“Thomas Lawson Reflects on East of Borneo,” Artforum, May 7, 2011.
Carolina Miranda, “East of Borneo: Where Wikipedia goes for SoCal art essays,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2014.
Andrew Berardini, “West Coast Love Affair: East of Borneo, Magazines, and Los Angeles,” Art Lies 67 (Fall/Winter 2010).
Naomi Fry, “Susan Morgan discusses Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader,” Artforum, June 14, 2012.
David E. James, “LA’s Hipster Cinema,” Film Quarterly 63, no. 1 (Fall 2009): 65.
Mimi Zeiger, “Past to Present: Unforgetting LA Uses Wikipedia as an Activist Art Platform,” PBS SoCal, March 30, 2014.
Steve Saldivar, “The Artists the Internet Almost Forgot,” Getty, February 26, 2015.