Jim Melchert with Constance Lewallen

Jim Melchert (1930-2023) was one of the leading figures in the San Francisco Bay Area artistic community, noted for his openness to experimentation and his encouragement of that of others. While championing the new, with particular emphasis on conceptualism and clay, he also set standards of integrity and grace among artists. Melchert received degrees from Princeton and the University of California, Berkely, where he studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and then at UC Berkeley. He was director of the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1977 until 1981 and of the American Academy in Rome from 1984 until 1988.

Curator and writer Constance Lewallen (1939-2022) was Adjunct Curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, where she curated many contemporary art exhibitions, including Ant Farm (1968-1978), 2004 (co-curated with Steve Seid), A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s, 2007, and co-curated Stephen Kaltenbach: The Beginning and the End for the Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis. She is the author of 500 Capp Street: David Ireland’s House and co-author with Dore Bowen of Bruce Nauman: Spatial Encounters, both published by UC Press. She was an Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail.