The Visual Arts Center (VAC) at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to announce the appointment of Max Fields as its new director. Fields joins the VAC from the FotoFest, where he served as curator and director of programs since 2019. As the director of an experiential, public-facing curatorial laboratory at UT Austin, Fields will provide vision and programmatic leadership in his new role at the Visual Arts Center. Fields begins his new role on April 8, 2024.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Max Fields to help us write the next chapter of the Visual Art Center’s story,” said Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, dean of the College of Fine Arts. “With his deep curatorial experiences at renowned institutions in Texas and beyond, he’s the perfect candidate to build upon the successes of the center and continue to elevate its profile.”
Fields has curated, co-curated and organized more than 30 exhibitions of contemporary art, including the 2022 FotoFest Biennial If I Had a Hammer with Steven Evans and Amy Sadao, the 2021 Texas Biennial exhibition In Place of an Index with Ryan Dennis and Evan Garza, and Gareth Long: Kidnappers Foil at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. Fields has held curatorial and administrative positions at FotoFest, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and Suplex Projects.
“I’m honored to be appointed director of the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin,” Fields said. “With its unique capacity to present exhibitions featuring artists from around the globe in tandem with student-organized and faculty-supported projects, the center represents a critical space for experimentation in education and contemporary art.
“My early conversations with the Center’s faculty, advisor group and staff have centered on building upon the institution’s rich history of curatorial and artistic exploration to present innovative and collaborative projects that connect the university with disparate audiences in Austin, at UT and around the globe. I’m excited to work collaboratively with the talented teams at the VAC and College of Fine Arts to fulfill the Visual Art Center’s mission of supporting risk-taking artists, curators and educators to realize ambitious projects.”
Fields’s exhibitions and projects have received attention and reviews from publications including The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, Mousse Magazine, The Guardian, Aperture and Texas Monthly. His writing on art and photography has appeared in numerous exhibition catalogs, magazines and journals.
Fields received his M.A. in Curatorial Studies from Bard College and a B.S. in Photography from Texas A&M-Commerce.
Founded in 2010, the Visual Arts Center offers a 13,000 square-foot gallery that provides a platform for artists, curators and educators to experiment, test ideas and take risks. The VAC organizes solo and group exhibitions with national and international artists, as well as the work of graduating seniors in the B.F.A. in Studio Art from the Department of Art and Art History and the work of M.F.A students from Studio Art and Design. The center hosts two artists-in-residence each academic year, and each residency culminates in an exhibition in the VAC’s main gallery space. The artist-in-residence program offers emerging artists an opportunity to engage with students and faculty at UT, to utilize the myriad resources on campus — from special collections to libraries and archives — and to realize an exhibition of their work.