press room

For Immediate Release

Washington DC – December 11, 2003 – Americans for the Arts announces the election of Liesel Fenner, Kerry Kennedy, and Patricia C. Phillips to its Public Art Network (PAN) Council.

The PAN Council advises the Board of Americans for the Arts about the expanding and diverse field of public art.  PAN is designed to provide services for the broad array of public art practitioners and to develop strategies and tools to improve communities through public art.  PAN’s key constituents are public art professionals, visual artists, design professionals, arts organizations, and communities planning public art projects and programs.  More than 350 public art programs currently exist in the United States at both the state and local levels.

“The Public Art Network has been doing extraordinary work since its inception in 2000, and we are very pleased to welcome Liesel Fenner, Kerry Kennedy, and Patricia C. Phillips to the PAN Council,” stated Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts.  “These new voices will help Americans for the Arts advocate for increased participation in public art throughout America, while fostering knowledge and understanding of its diversity.”

Liesel Fenner has over twelve years of multi-disciplinary arts administration experience developing, managing, and producing diverse public art and community development projects and programs.  She is currently the artistic creation and distribution manager of the New England Foundation for the Arts, where she also served as the culture in community fund manager and program coordinator.  She was a course instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she co-developed the curricula for “Sites of Art: The Poetics of Place.”  Fenner is a registered landscape architect, and has held positions at the California Department of Transportation, City of Oakland, and Sasaki Associates, Inc. 

Kerry Kennedy has served as the administrator of the Public Art and Design Program at Broward County Cultural Affairs in Fort Lauderdale, Florida since 2001, where she also served as project manager since 1999.  She has 10 years of experience in museum administration, including work with the Orange County Historical Museum in Orlando, and both the Valentine Museum and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.  She has lectured on public art internationally, including “Public Art and The Environment:  Implications and a New Direction for Broward County, Florida” at the Public Art Observatory, in Lisbon, Portugal.  She currently serves as president of the Florida Association of Public Art Administrators. 

Patricia C. Phillips is a researcher and critical writer whose work involves contemporary public art, architecture, sculpture, landscape, and the intersection of those areas.  Since 1980, her essays and reviews have been published in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Sculpture, and Public Art Review, and she is the editor of Art Journal, the publication of the College Art Association.  Her curatorial projects include Disney Animators and Animation (Whitney Museum of Art, 1981), The POP Project (Institute for Contemporary Art/P.S. 1, 1988), and Making Sense: Five Installations on Sensation (Katonah Museum of Art, 1996.)  She has lectured nationally and internationally on contemporary public art, architecture, and environment art, and is presently a professor of art at the State University of New York at New Paltz after having previously served as the dean of its School of Fine & Performing Arts.

Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America. With offices in Washington, DC, and New York City, it has a 40-year record of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts. Additional information is available at www.AmericansForTheArts.org.

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