Renny Pritikin

Renny Pritikin was the Director of the Richard L. Nelson Gallery and the Fine Arts Collection at the University of California, Davis until 2012. On 2014-04-28 he begins his job as Chief Curator of San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum.

Pritikin was named Chief Curator for all artistic programs (film/video,visual art, performing arts, education) of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in January 1997 after serving as Director of the Visual Arts Program since 1992. From 1979 to 1992 he served as Executive Director of New Langton Arts in San Francisco, an alternative space internationally renowned for its presentations of new visual art, interdisciplinary performance, video, literature and music. Pritikin has curated numerous exhibitions, and has authored catalogue essays and articles. Some of his projects include: Alan Rath: Robot Dance and Other Sculpture; Bay Area Now, a regional survey; Fred Tomaselli: The Urge to be Transported; Eight from South Africa; The Art of Star Wars; Hall of Fame Hall of Fame,; Don Ed Hardy at the Cuenca Bienal; and You See.

Pritikin has been a frequent consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, and was a founder of the National Association of Artists Organizations, and has also served on their Board of Directors. As a writer he received the 1989 McCarron Fellowship for art criticism, and has had three chapbooks of his poetry published, How We Talk (Collective Foundation POD Press, 2007), All These Trees (e.g. Press, Oakland, 1985) and Fourth Gear City Limits (Two Windows Press, Berkeley, 1976). He has been a contributing writer for Art Practical since 2009. In 1995 he received a United States Information Agency fellowship to tour and lecture in Japan and the Koret Israel Prize, a fellowship to visit Israel. In 1999 he travelled to Taiwan as a juror for the Ninth Annual International Print and Drawing Biennale at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In 2001 he was the curator chosen to represent the United States at the Cuenca (Ecuador) Bienal, and in 2003 he lectured in three cities in New Zealand as a Fulbright Fellow.

In addition to the California College of the Arts, he has taught art administration and artist professional skills training at California State University, San Francisco and Golden Gate University. Pritikin holds a Masters degree in interdisciplinary art from California State University, San Francisco, and a BA from The New School for Social Research in New York.

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