State of the Art/Art of the State Returns to CAM

A 24 Hour Art Happening

Friday, April 1 5:00 pm to Saturday, April 2 5:00 pm

All North Carolina Artists Invited to Participate

Wilmington, N.C. –

State of the Art/Art of the State returns to Cameron Art Museum on April 1 with a 24-hour Art Happening. All artists currently living in, or native to, the state of North Carolina are welcome to bring a single work of art to be installed in the museum between 5:00 pm Friday, April 1 and 5:00 pm Saturday, April 2. All artists must be present with their work, no exceptions. Read the artist prospectus HERE.
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Inspired by famed curator Walter Hopps, the design of this project provides any participating artist equal opportunity to meet a significant curator working in the field of contemporary art and have their work seen by all visiting curators and the public when the exhibition opens on Saturday, April 9. During the 24-hour Art Happening,a nationally renowned curator will be present to greet each artist. This year CAM is pleased to welcome Alejo Benedetti from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Dr. Maia Nuku from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael Rooks from the High Museum of Art Atlanta.    

Cameron Art Museum will remain open to the public for 24-hours with programming and events for all including readings, spoken word, music, drag queens, film screenings, yoga and much more. A suggested donation of $10 is requested. Check out the full schedule HERE.  

The exhibition State of the Art/Art of the State opens to the public Saturday, April 9 and runs through Sunday, September 13. 

State of the Art/Art of the State is made possible in part by the Thomas S. Kenan Foundation

Guest Curators Bios

Alejo Benedetti

Alejo Benedetti is Associate Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. In his role at the museum, he focuses on art since 1960 and oversees the Contemporary Art Galleries and the outdoor sculpture program. This spring he will act as the venue curator for The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, originally organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
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In 2020, he co-curated State of the Art 2020, bringing together 61 contemporary artists from across the United States in an exhibition that opened at Crystal Bridges and the Momentary in February 2020 and is now traveling. Benedetti also organized the 2019 exhibition, Men of Steel, Women of Wonder, which looked at art-world responses to Superman and Wonder Woman and traveled to the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art. 
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He is originally from Texas and earned his master’s degree in Art History from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and his bachelor of arts from the University of Missouri, Columbia. 

Dr. Maia Nuku

Born in London of English and Māori (Ngai Tai) descent, Maia Nuku is Curator for the Arts of Oceania at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Maia’s doctoral research focused on eighteenth century collections of Polynesian art and she completed two post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge University (2008-2014) in England as part of an international research team exploring Oceanic art collections in European institutions in France, Spain, the Netherlands and Russia. Researching the collections alongside Pacific artists, practitioners and scholars, the work was collaborative and sought to create access to these collections both in the physical and digital domains. During her time at the Met, Maia has evolved a curatorial approach that centers indigenous Pacific perspectives, grounding the presentation of visual arts from Oceania in the unique cosmological connections that make art from the region so compelling. Her most recent exhibition Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesian Art (2018 - 2019) explored the close material and genealogical relationships that bind Polynesian islanders with the natural world. She is currently working on a major reinstallation of the Oceania galleries that will reimagine the collection for 21stcentury audiences and animate the galleries with Pacific voices.

Michael Rooks

Michael Rooks joined the High Museum as Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art in January 2010. Besides his responsibilities at the High, Rooks was appointed Commissioner and co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia in 2010 and was a committee member of ActArt, President Obama’s initiative bridging contemporary art and social action.    

Prior to joining the High Museum, Mr. Rooks held curator positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and the Honolulu Academy of Arts. At Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Rooks curated several group exhibitions and solo projects in addition to survey exhibitions of work by Roy Lichtenstein (1999) and H. C. Westermann (2001) for which he co-authored Westermann’s catalogue rasionné. As curator at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu Rooks curated more than 15 exhibitions including projects by Michael Lin, Paul Morrison, and Yoshitomo Nara. 

His exhibitions at the High Museum of Art have included: Workshopping:An American Model of Architectural Practice (U.S. Pavilion at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia in 2010); two historical survey exhibitions in partnership with MoMA entitled Picasso to Warhol: 14 Modern Masters and Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913-2013;  KAWS: DOWN TIME; Alex Katz: This Is Now; Imagining New Worlds: José Parlá and Fahamu Pecou; Al Taylor, What Are You Looking At?, and With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino and Tommie Smith; Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors; What Is Left Unspoken, Love; and Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden, among others.