SUNY New Paltz dean of fine and performing arts named executive editor of Art Journal

NEW PALTZ — Patricia C. Phillips, art critic, curator and dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at New Paltz, has been named executive editor of Art Journal, the contemporary art quarterly of the College Art Association.

The CAA is the national organization of artists, art historians, and other visual-arts and museum professionals. It has published Art Journal as a forum for wide-ranging discussions about art since 1941.

“We’re thrilled to have Patricia Phillips apply her talents as a critic and educator to the magazine’s next phase of development,” said Eve Sinaiko, CAA’S director of publications.

Phillips has been the dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at SUNY New Paltz since 1997 and was the chair of the Art Department from 1991 to 1996. Before that, she was associate chair of the Department of Environmental Design at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan.

Phillips is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Sculpture and Public Art Review, and has written for these publications and for Artforum, Art in America, and Flash Art. She has nationally and internationally lectured about public art, design, sculpture, and the points where they intersect. She also authored It Is Difficult, a survey of the work of installation artist and photographer Alfredo Jaar (Actar Press, 1998).

Phillips organized the exhibition “City Speculations” at the Queens Museum of Art and edited its related book (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).

Phillips received her bachelor’s degree in art and art history from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. She did her graduate studies in landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin.

“I look forward to this opportunity to help guide the aesthetic, pedagogical, and intellectual content of a national publication that is read by so many artists and college art educators,” said Phillips. “I hope that my work with the Art Journal will deepen my teaching contributions to the arts at SUNY New Paltz.”

Phillips’ three-year appointment as executive editor begins on July 1. For further information, visit the Web site www.collegeart.org or call the College Art Association at (212) 691-1051.