The Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMA) in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan has hired artist, curator, and educator Seth Cameron, who cofounded the Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQF), as its new executive director. The institution has operated without a director since June 2019, when Barbara Hunt-McLanahan, who helmed the museum for nearly six years, passed away after battling pancreatic cancer.
“Seth Cameron is an extraordinary leader who is uniquely positioned to build upon the work that the Children’s Museum of the Arts has championed for thirty years—exposing children and families to the transformative power of the arts,” said the CMA’s board chair William S. Floyd. “Under his leadership, CMA will be poised to reach greater heights.”
The Bruce High Quality Foundation—an artist collective that masquerades as the foundation of an imaginary cultural producer—was launched by a semi-anonymous group of creatives who work under the banner of Bruce. The collective’s work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial, in the Biennale de Lyon, and in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2013. In September 2009, it opened the BHQFU, an experimental tuition-free arts school, which Cameron led from its inception until it closed in 2017.
Represented by Nathalie Karg Gallery (New York) and McClain Gallery (Houston), Cameron has served as the creative director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and as a professor of theory and studio practice. He has also lectured frequently on issues in arts education across the United States. An exhibition of new paintings by Cameron is currently on view at Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami.
Commenting on his new post, which he will take up on February 3, Cameron said: “I am thrilled, eager, impatient even, to learn everything I can from the young artists served by Children’s Museum of the Arts. They know art isn’t a luxury or a need, yet somehow both and more—it’s how we all become a part of the world. They know it is how we speak to each other and to ourselves. Sure, it can be intimidating, as any worthwhile adventure is, but they know it is how we go beyond hope and fear, beyond the past and the future, and into the now, the right now, in all its strangeness and humor and beauty and fullness. They know that’s what art is, and I’m honored to join the dedicated team at CMA where this knowledge is made new for young people every day.”
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