Karen Kessel, Visual Resources Specialist, Art and Art History Department

EDUCATION

2003:      Interdisciplinary master’s degree combining Anthropology, Native American Studies, and Art History, Sonoma State University; thesis on bird imagery and symmetry patterns on thirteenth and fourteenth century painted ceramics of the Anasazi people of Southwestern North America.

1985-90: University of Nevada, Las Vegas: courses in Italian & Art History
1985 & 1987: Slide Curator Workshops at University of Texas, Austin
1976-80: San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA: BFA, ceramic sculpture          
1977-78: Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA: courses in art history, printmaking, and drawing
1973-77: Workshops and apprenticeships in ceramics and printmaking
1967-71: University of California, Davis: BA in Anthropology, 1971. Dean's List 1969-70.  9-week field archaeology course for David Hurst Thomas’ dissertation research near Austin, Nevada, summer of 1970.

I have been Visual Resources Curator at Sonoma State University since 1991 after managing the Visual Resources Collection at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for nine years and an 18-month stints assisting the director of the C.E. Smith Anthropology Museum at California State University, Hayward, and the Marin Museum of the American Indian in Novato.  I am an active member of the Visual Resources Association.  I have organized and participated in some of their annual conference panels, contributed articles to their quarterly publication and was the founding chair of the local chapter of the organization, which promotes communication among institutions and service providers and development of standards for visual resources collections.