With the new school year approaching, the University of Arizona Museum of Art and the Center for Creative Photography are busy preparing new showcases for their students and all students who are interested in creative artistry. 

Many incoming freshmen are busy with classes, moving into a dorm and adjusting to surroundings that they are not familiar with. One campus location adventurous students should check out is the Center for Creative Photography. Meg Jackson Fox, Ph.D., is the associate curator of the Center for Creative Photography, and she wants people to know what the CCP is all about. 

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Accessibility is important to the CCP, according to Fox, which is why they created so many versatile ways for students to view the work that they do. Fox said she is proud of what the center does for the UA and the world beyond. 

“CCP is at its foundation an institution dedicated to education and research — we engage with classes; facilitate the research of students, faculty, and scholars; collaborate with units across campus for programs like lectures, performances, community days, block parties, exhibitions and the like,” Fox said via email. “CCP, like Arizona Arts Live and the University of Arizona Museum of Art, simultaneously serves our academic communities and our local, national, and international communities. The Center is both a conduit for the history of photography and a space in which to investigate ideas.”

With the pandemic still ongoing, the CCP is unfortunately closed with a return date yet to be determined. However, this has not stopped the center from working hard to adapt and find ways to still share the beauty of photography with the students of the UA. 

“As [COVID-19] continued to unfold since March 2020, our staff quickly learned how to navigate digital programming through the resources we had available,” Fox said. “We started a new student-focused series that featured student work on CCP’s Instagram account and was coordinated by Maryan Hassan, an amazing undergraduate student who worked with our academic & public programs team. Our curators designed a new series to highlight the work of up-and-coming artists, while our archivists and registrars told stories from objects and artworks in our collections.”  

With the CCP working hard to produce art during the pandemic, the UAMA was doing the same. That was why Chelsea Farrar, the curator of community engagement for the UAMA, wanted students from all walks of life to check out the museum. 

“Students should make visiting the museum of art a regular part of their campus experience because the visual arts can play a significant role in helping us think through major issues and questions of today’s society,” Farrar said via email. “As students prepare to tackle the world’s next big questions and problems, art can actually play a role with that.”

Visiting the CCP was another way for students to connect creativity to their own lives and worlds too.

“It’s an incredible gem here in the Southwest, one that I believe has so much energy and possibility as we continue to learn more about how photography participates in our lives, in our disciplines, in our sense of selves and one another,” Fox said. 

One of the UAMA’s largest in-person events in over a decade is the “The Art of Food” exhibition. It will take up two-thirds of the museum and will feature over 100 displays of art. 

Olivia Miller was one of the people in charge of planning the event and, as the curator of exhibitions, it was her job to make sure everything was perfect. 

The exhibition was curated from the collection of Jordan Schnitzer, a Portland-based art collector that features art from Enrique Chagoya, Damien Hirst, Hung Liu, Analia Saban, Lorna Simpson and Andy Warhol. 

“We weren’t sure what direction we would go in, but we knew that we wanted the show to feature prominent artists, connect to our local Tucson community, and offer interdisciplinary interpretations of the artwork to connect the exhibition to our university campus,” Miller said via email. “After looking through his collection the concept of food began to stand out to us, knowing that Tucson is [a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] City of Gastronomy, and that we have some of the leading programs in food research at the UA.”

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This tasty display of art opens Oct. 24. Students who bring their CatCard will be admitted for free, Miller said. For more information on the UAMA and its creative offerings, visit artmuseum.arizona.edu.

To stay updated with the CCP and its exhibits, visit their website at ccp.arizona.edu.

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