ALEESA PITCHAMARN ALEXANDER

Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander is the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Associate

Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, where she has been since 2018. As a curator, Aleesa is committed to providing meaningful platforms for historically excluded artists and opportunities to expand narratives in the history of art through collection building, exhibitions, and community outreach. At the Cantor, she is curator of The Faces of Ruth Asawa (July 2022 – Ongoing), East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art (Sept. 28, 2022 – Feb. 12, 2023), and The Medium Is the Message: Art since 1950 (Feb. 23, 2019 – Ongoing). Working with assistant professor of art history Marci Kwon, Aleesa is Co-Director of the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI), which is working to transform the Cantor into the preeminent institution for the collection, display, and study of Asian American/Asian diasporic art in the United States. Aleesa cultivates relationships with community members, donors, artist estates, and living artists to help build the Cantor’s growing collection of Asian American art, which is now one of the best nationally.

Aleesa has contributed to multiple exhibition catalogs and publications, most recently she has written about Ruth Asawa, Dominque Fung, and Lien Truong. With Marci Kwon, she co-edited a special issue of Panorama (where she also serves on the advisory board), about Asian American art in 2021. Her scholarship has been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the American Craft Council. A first-generation college graduate, Aleesa grew up between Bangkok, Thailand, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and Salem, Oregon. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2018.