Curator-led Tour and Talk on Bonnie Ora Sherk

Please join us for a walkthrough of Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970 led by exhibition curator Tanya Zimbardo. Following the exhibition tour, Zimbardo will present a talk on the artist’s performance practice, followed by a conversation with UCSB Professor Jenni Sorkin.

Tanya Zimbardo is an independent curator and writer based in San Francisco. She has guest (co-) curated exhibitions and related public programs at the Berkeley Art Center; di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art; Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture; Mills College Art Museum; Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at San Jose State University; Slash; and the 500 Capp Street Foundation, among others. She is working on upcoming projects in 2027 for UCR ARTS and Mills College Art Museum. Zimbardo has curated select artist film and video screening programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, independently, and for organizations such as Artists’ Television Access, Canyon Cinema Foundation, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts. She recently curated and co-edited the catalog Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970 (Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture), which will travel to the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara in the Fall of 2026. Zimbardo has contributed to publications including Feminist Media Histories, INCITE Journal of Experimental Media, and VoCA Journal. Zimbardo regularly gives public lectures and guest talks to higher education classes.

Jenni Sorkin writes on the intersections between gender, material culture, and contemporary art. Her recent is Art in California (2021), written for Thames & Hudson’s acclaimed World of Art series. As a state, California is the site of tremendous diversity in the visual arts and has been at the forefront of cultural production throughout the 20th century. Her first book, Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community (University of Chicago Press, 2016) examined the confluence of gender, artistic labor, and the history of post-war ceramics. Recent projects include the essay “Affinities in Abstraction: Textiles and Otherness in 1970s Painting,” in Outliers and American Vanguard Art. Lynne Cooke, ed. (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2018) and “Alterity Rocks: 1973-1993,” Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now. Maggie Taft and Robert Cozzolino, eds. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018). She has published widely as an art critic, and her writing has appeared in Artforum, Art Journal, Art Monthly, East of Borneo, NU: The Nordic Art Review, Frieze, The Journal of Modern Craft, Modern Painters and Third Text. In 2004, she received the Art Journal Award. She currently serves on the editorial board of Journal of Modern Craft, and has served as a member of the editorial boards of Art Journal and Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. She is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (2014-15), the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design (2012), the Getty Research Institute (2010-11), and the ACLS/Luce Fellowship in American Art (2008).