Scholar-in-Residence

Leesa Fanning
Charleston, SC | Spring 2024

FSA Visionary Leesa Fanning was a visiting scholar-in-residence at our Charleston residency program in spring 2024. For her residency, she conceived The Gratitude Project, in which she wrote letters of gratitude to a select group of contemporary artists who were included in her publication, Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art (2018). The letters expressed her sincere gratitude to the artists for the gift of their art to her, and more expansively, to the world. She explained how the presence of their work benefits humankind and has the power to transform lives. Fanning commented on how each artist’s oeuvre has continually provided sustenance: a sense of plentitude, place of respite, and understandings of humanistic, philosophical, and spiritual considerations for all interested audiences to explore, and how contemplating their art brings a heightened sense of awareness and moments of transcendence. Finally, Fanning described how each artist’s work provided a foundation and wellspring of meaning and lived spiritual experience, for which she remains grateful. The letters were professionally printed on stationary and mailed around the world as gifts to the artists, with the recipients free to respond if and when they chose.

 

Leesa Fanning is an independent curator specializing in contemporary global art in all media. She is the author of the seminal volume, Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art (2018), published by Yale University Press and The Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Leesa Fanning is an independent curator specializing in contemporary global art in all media. She is the author of the seminal volume, Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art (2018), published by Yale University Press and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Her contributions to the intersection of contemporary art and spirituality are evident in her impressive curatorial endeavors as as former Curator of Contemporary Art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (1998-2018), among which have been Janet Cardiff: Forty-Part Motet, Nick Cave: Property, Bill Viola’s The Raft, Wolfgang Laib: Without Place—Without Time—Without Body, and Shirin Neshat: Turbulent.

Fanning holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Kansas. She has taught art history classes on contemporary art and African art at The University of Kansas, The University of Missouri, and The Kansas City Art Institute. Today, as independent curator, Fanning has curated such exhibitions as Life-Altering: Selections from a Kansas City Collection (the Bill and Christy Gautreaux collection) and Native American Art Now, an exhibition of paintings, sculpture, photography and installation by more than twenty contemporary Indigenous artists from diverse tribal affiliations spanning the United States and Canada (Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York City, 2023).

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Wolfgang Laib, "Without Place–Without Time–Without Body," pollen and rice, 2010. Featured in "Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art."

Janet Cardiff, "Forty Part Motet," 40-track audio installation, 14 minutes, 2001. Featured in "Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art."

Sonam Dolma, "My Fathers Death," 49 cast-off monks robes from Lhasa and plaster, 2011. Featured in "Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art."

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Leesa Fanning | “Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art”

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Leesa Fanning | Curator Website

Leesa Fanning | “Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art” Lecture