Lunder Institute @ Crystal Bridges: Bite-Sized Conversations

American art is dynamic! Are you curious about how Crystal Bridges thinks about the pressing issues of American Art? How are new directions in American art reflected in our collection? How will multiple perspectives impact our new galleries?

In partnership with the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art, we are proud to present Bite-Sized Conversations, an evening of short conversations that showcase the work and stories of regional artists Danielle Hatch, Linda Nguyen Lopez, and Kalyn Fay Barnoski.

Each conversation between an artist and a Crystal Bridges curator is paired with either a beverage, tasty treat, or craft activity. The curators leading the program include Curator of Contemporary Art Alejo Benedetti, Windgate Curator of Craft Jen Padgett, and Curator of Indigenous Art Jordan Poorman Cocker.

Tickets are $5 (free for students), reserve your spot online or with Guest Services at (479) 657-2335 today.
Ticket includes one alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage and curated hors d’oeuvre.

Linda Nguyen Lopez

Linda Nguyen Lopez (b. 1981, Visalia, California) is a first-generation American artist of Vietnamese and Mexican descent. Her abstract works explore the poetic potential of the everyday by imagining and articulating a vast emotional range embedded in the mundane objects that surround us. Her works have been exhibited in Italy, New Zealand, England, France, and throughout United States including the Renwick Gallery at Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Craft Contemporary Museum, Los Angeles; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach; Daum Museum of Art; Springfield Art Museum; and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Lopez is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Arkansas.

Danielle Hatch

Danielle Hatch is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the female body’s relationship to the built environment, notions of artificiality and power structures, through site specific installations, sculptures and performances. She has a BA in architecture from Wellesley College and an MFA in Spatial Studies from UC-Santa Barbara.

Kalyn Fay Barnoski

Kalyn Fay Barnoski (Cherokee Nation enrollee, Muscogee Creek descent) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, musician, and curator whose work focuses on finding how we all intersect and building bridges of understanding between each of us.

Jen Padgett

Jen Padgett is the Windgate Curator of Craft at Crystal Bridges. In addition to advancing craft across the museum’s collection, she specializes in modern art from the 1900s to 1950s. Since joining the museum in 2017, she has organized multiple reinstallations of the museum’s Modern Art Galleries and exhibitions including Crafting America, which she co-curated with Glenn Adamson, and Takaezu & Tawney: An Artist is a Poet, currently on view. Padgett received her MA and PhD in Art History & Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Alejo Benedetti

Alejo Benedetti is Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. In his role he oversees the Contemporary Art Galleries and the outdoor sculpture program at Crystal Bridges and the Momentary. He is the curator of Annie Leibovitz at Work, an exhibition that places new photographs by the photographer in conversation with iconic works from across her storied career, which opened Fall of 2023 and will travel to four additional venues. He is also the curator for Listening Forest by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a mid-career retrospective of outdoor sculptures on view in Crystal Bridges’ North Forest through the end of 2023.

In 2020, he co-curated State of the Art 2020, bringing together 61 contemporary artists from across the United States in an exhibition that opened at Crystal Bridges and the Momentary. Benedetti also organized the 2019 exhibition, Men of Steel, Women of Wonder, which looked at art-world responses to Superman and Wonder Woman and traveled to multiple venues around the US.

He is originally from Texas and earned his master’s degree in art history from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Jordan Poorman Cocker

As the new full-time curator of Indigenous art at the Crystal Bridges Museum, Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa Tribe and Kingdom of Tonga) plays a key role in strengthening relationships with Indigenous artists, expanding the collection of Indigenous art, providing opportunities for reciprocity through collaboration, and helping shape the vision for the museum’s expansion.

Prior to her current appointment, Poorman Cocker held curatorial positions at various institutions, including the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma. She serves as the 2021-2025 Terra Foundation Guest Co-Curator of Indigenous Art at the Block Museum, Evanston, Illinois.

Lunder Institute @ Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was made possible through the support and partnership of the Lunder Institute for American Art, an initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art.

Museums included in this series include de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Addison Gallery, the MFA Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.