Fall Feast 2024

The Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) is an arts nonprofit, research center, and publisher that aims to expand public discourses and historical records to reflect art’s abundant pasts, presents, and futures. Through initiatives including publishing, exhibitions, public programs, and fellowships, we seek to challenge dominant narratives and amplify the breadth of arts and culture.

Cynthia Hawkins (b. 1950, Queens, NY) received a BA in painting from Queens College in 1977 and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1992. In addition to her career as an artist, she was the long-time director of the Bertha V.B. Lederer Gallery at SUNY Geneseo and completed an American Studies Ph.D dissertation at the University of Buffalo on the role art played in Black society at the turn of the 19th century. Her one-person exhibitions include Just Above Midtown, New York (1981); Frances Wolfson Art Center, Miami (1986); Cinque Gallery, New York (1989); Queens College Art Center (1997); Buffalo Science Museum, Buffalo (2009); STARS, Los Angeles (2022); and Ortuzar Projects, New York (2023). She will have forthcoming presentations at Kaufmann Repetto, Milan; Hollybush Gardens, London; and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Hawkins has received numerous awards, including the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting (2023); the Black Metropolis Research Consortium Fellowship (2009); The Herbert and Irene Wheeler Grant (1995); and the Brooklyn Museum Art School Scholarship (1972). A publication of the artist's work is forthcoming with CARA in 2024.

Alice Mackler (b. 1931, New York, NY, d. 2024, New York, NY) developed a multidisciplinary body of artwork over the course of six-plus decades, including ceramics, painting, drawing, and collage. She attended the Art Students League in New York from 1952-1954 and received her BFA years later from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1988. Since her 2013 solo exhibition at Kerry Schuss, her work has been a part of group exhibitions The Jewish Museum, NY (2015); White Columns, NY (2016); and MOCA Tucson, AZ (2016); among others. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, and Art in America, among other publications. CARA co-published the monograph Alice Mackler in 2021.

Mariana Castillo Deball
Jane Hait, Chair
Matt Keegan
Shahed Fakhari Larson, Vice Chair
Andrew Marks, Treasurer
Howard Marks
Miko McGinty
Sherally Munshi
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Schuster Tanger
Kelly Taxter
Julia Trotta
Helen Warwick, Secretary