C. Tara Gladden
Artist - Curator - Educator
Curatorial STATEMENT
I approach my curatorial practice as a catalyst for community engagement & development, communication, learning, and shared experience. My vision and goal is to create and work within an art-centered environment that is a democratic, transformational space that nurtures inclusivity, constructive dialogue, and represents a multiplicity of perspectives.
My style is comprised of close collaborations with colleagues, artists, & the community to develop exhibitions and programming that foster curiosity, communication, and offer new experiences. By embracing and exploring various histories, issues, concepts, contemporary art, and social movements, the groundwork is set to form programs and environments that are animated by diverse, timely thought, where the models that emerge follow creative urges rather than the other way around. I take a creative approach to curating and programming to form structures and models that work for the goals of each individual project.
I strive to create rigorous exhibitions and programs that ask questions about how art matters in the world, our communities, and in our everyday lives. I take an approach that steps out of the box as necessary; offering adventurous yet accessible programming that creates a context for both individual and shared community experience, and connects meaning with making for personal, memorable, transformative experiences.
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2012-current: John Cage Memorial Park and Chance House Artist Residency
*Co-founded, co-directed and co-curated with David Gladden.
2020 On the Black History of Kent County and Washington College, by Jason Patterson, October 27 - March 12, Kohl Gallery @ Washington College
On the Black History of Kent County and Washington College, by Jason Patterson is the culmination of 2 years of work Patterson completed during his Frederick Douglass Fellowship, and the result of a year-long collaboration between Patterson, myself as Kohl Gallery Director and Curator, and The Starr Center. The exhibit presents a curated chronology of African American experience in Kent County and at Washington College from the 1780's to the present. While looking critically at histories of enslavement, white supremacy, and racial injustice as related to the college, town, and county, the exhibit also celebrates achievements of Washington College students and African American Kent county community leaders and activists. The project was additionally awarded and supported by a 2020 Chesapeake Heartland Staff/Faculty Fellowship. The virtual exhibit is featured on the Chesapeake Heartland website.
2020 Khristian Weeks: the Realest, online exhibit:, September 9 – October 10, Kohl Gallery @ Washington College
"the Realest" is a site-specific work of video art created by Baltimore-based artist, Khristian Weeks while "in residence" at Kohl Gallery on the campus of Washington College in August 2020. It draws from his long practice of working with various types of visceral phenomena - sonic, visual, kinetic, and situational. During this time of art and life in the age of COVID, Weeks has reimagined the multi-layered physical nature of his work as an immersive audiovisual experience to be viewed on screen.
2020 Intimate Generations, January 29-February 29, Kohl Gallery @ Washington College
Intimate Generations features contemporary artists working broadly around themes of family connection. Artists chanan delivuk, Roxana Alger Geffen, Aimee Gilmore, Khánh H. Lê, Kalen Na’il Roach, and Aaron Wax reimagine family narratives, illuminating and re-envisioning lives and identities.
2019 \\\SIGN SYSTEMS/// October 15-December 7, Kohl Gallery @ Washington College
Features artworks by a diverse group of 8 contemporary artists. Each artist in the exhibition has developed their own highly individualized system of visual signs that explore a range of timely issues and topics, including heritage, identity, sociopolitical conflict, histories of technology, gender, race, spirituality, mortality, and possible futures of the human race in this moment of the Anthropocene. Artists include: Corinne Beardsley, Jordan Deal, Robin Kang, Linling Lu, Hedieh Ilchi, Victor Torres, Jonathan Sims, and Christy Deetz.
*From 2014-2019, I worked as Galleries Manager at Salisbury University Art Galleries. All of the following projects were developed and exhibited during
my time in that position.
2019 DAVID FIRST: Dave’s Waves Sonic Café, interactive audiovisual exhibition and performance.
Link to exhibition and event images:
2019 UNDERCURRENTS 01: Spring Festival celebrating underground Art and Culture on the Eastern Shore.
2018 Sabrina Ratté: SHIFTING LANDSCAPES, 3d animation exhibition of landscapes inspired by Tanguy and Kay Sage, and Brutalist architecture around Paris.
2018 TIMOTHY NOHE: Voltage is Signal
2018 HYPHENATIVE, group exhibition exploring mythic histories, re-imagined folk traditions and cultural appropriation.
*Co-curated with Director of Galleries, Elizabeth Kauffman
Link to Performance and Installation Images:
2018 REMAKE/REMODEL, 2-person exhibition featuring artists Heather Harvey and Aurora Robson, both of whom create installations with trash and recycled materials.
*Co-curated with Director of Galleries, Elizabeth Kauffman
2018 AMBER ROBLES-GORDON: The Talking Stick Project, *Co-curated with Director of Galleries, Elizabeth Kauffman
2018 CROSS CURRENTS, community-focused exhibition featuring contemporary artists on and around the Delmarva Peninsula. * Co-curated with Director of Galleries, Elizabeth Kauffman
2018 BRAVE NEW EARTH, exhibition exploring climate change and the environment featuring work by Brack Morrow, Amy Balkin, and Heather Theresa Clark. * Co-curated with Director of Galleries, Elizabeth Kauffman
Link to Brack Morrow Residency Images:
2018 THOMAS DEXTER, Multimedia Performance
2017 THE WAY WE WORKED, Smithsonian traveling exhibition about the history of Labor in the US. Included curated contemporary work by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Cat Mazza and Curtis Woody. *Co-curated with Director of Galleries, Elizabeth Kauffman
2017 RICHARD GARET: Within the Temporal, immersive electronic exhibition and performance.
Link to Performance and Installation Images:
2017 Panoply Performance Laboratory: EMBARRASSED OF THE WHOLE, 3-week residency, interactive exhibition, 2 performances, and a performance workshop.
Link to Performance and Installation Images:
2017 TANIA LOU SMITH: untitled (domestic gestures), performance video exhibition.
2017 Liss LaFleur: IN TRAINING, interdisciplinary exhibition featuring work inspired by Claude Cahun.
Performance and Installation Images:
2016 inFORMATION: An exhibition and series of live events exploring varied perspectives in Black Culture featuring Black Radical Imagination screening, Baltimore Boom Bap Society and Ada Pinkston live performance with Ancestral Duo and Amorous Ebony. *Co-curated with Director of Galleries, Elizabeth Kauffman
2016 SHATTERED FRAMES: The Films of Martha Colburn, featuring stump speech style election animations of “Drumpf” and “Hillary”, closed on election day.
2016 LoVid: TEPHRA GARDEN, interactive media and textile exhibition.
2016 BEING HER NOW: Feminine Identity in the 21st Century, juried exhibition, panel and curated live performance event. *Co-organized with Dr. Victoria Pass
Link to Performance and Installation Images:
2016 Morgan Craig, RAZING THE NEW DEAL: AN EXPLORATION OF ARCHITECTURE AND IDENTITY
2015 THE BOOK OF EVERYDAY INSTRUCTION, Things I’ve seen people do lately by Chloe Bass, a participatory exhibition exploring one on one social interaction and voyeurism.
2015 THE GREAT AMERICAN LANDSCAPE: Photographs of Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, David H. Gibson and George Alexander Grant, in commemoration of the National Parks centennial, it included a book signing by Ren and Helen Davis.