On December 10, please join Artadia and the Brooklyn Museum for a free online public program featuring Pilar Tompkins-Rivas, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in conversation with Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at The Brooklyn Museum. The event will be live closed captioned, if any accessibility accommodations are needed please email info@artadia.org.

Thursday, December 10, 6pm EST / 5pm CST / 3pm PST

Click here to RSVP


Pilar Tompkins Rivas is Chief Curator and Deputy Director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Previously, she was the director of the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College, where she served as director and chief curator since 2016. At VPAM she spearheaded partnerships between the museum and the Smithsonian; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); and the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens; and launched diversity pipeline programs including a museum studies certificate program. Prior to her tenure at VPAM, she served as coordinator of curatorial initiatives at LACMA, co-directing the institution’s UCLA-LACMA Art History Practicum Initiative and the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program in addition to co-curating exhibitions in partnership with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Tompkins Rivas has also served as curator and director of artist-in-residence programs at 18th Street Arts Center, arts project coordinator at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and curator of the Claremont Museum of Art. She is completing a PhD in cultural studies and holds an MA in cultural studies from Claremont Graduate University, in addition to a BA in Latin American studies and a BFA in studio art from the University of Texas at Austin. 


Catherine Morris is the Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Since 2009, Catherine Morris has curated a number of exhibitions for the Sackler Center including the upcoming Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And (co-curated with Aruna D’Souza); We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 (co-curated with Rujeko Hockley); Judith Scott—Bound and Unbound (co-curated with Matthew Higgs); Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art (co-curated with Vincent Bonin); Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters to “The Ladder”; Between the Door and the Street: A performance initiated by Suzanne Lacy; “Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts; Kathë Kollwitz: Prints from the “War” and “Death” Portfolios; Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin; Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919Matthew Buckingham: “The Spirit and the Letter”; Lorna Simpson: Gathered; Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts”; Kiki Smith: Sojourn; and Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864. She was also the in-house curator of Eva Hesse Spectres 1960 and Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968.


Artadia’s Art & Dialogue invites curators from across the United States, who are experts in their field, to deeply engage with each Award city through a series of virtual studio visits with local Awardees and public programs, co-hosted with local partner organizations.

Founded in 1999, Artadia is a nonprofit grantmaker and nationwide community of visual artists, curators, and patrons. Artadia elevates the careers of these artists through a proven combination of recognition, grantmaking, community support, and advocacy. We believe that by working collaboratively to improve the conditions necessary for artists from all backgrounds to thrive and succeed, Artadia can strengthen their communities and foster economic justice in the arts. 


The Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the country, with its roots dating back to 1823. Today, the Brooklyn Museum’s mission is to create inspiring encounters with art that expand the ways in which we see ourselves, the world and its possibilities. The Museum believes great art and courageous conversations are catalysts for a more connected, civic, and empathetic world.

Photo by Monica Orozco, courtesy of Pilar Tompkins-Rivas