Janet L. McCall

In this role, she is responsible for management, artistic oversight, and fundraising for this 41-year-old non-profit that includes a gallery featuring work by national/international artists, an education center, a retail store, community outreach partnerships, and a downtown satellite gallery. Under her leadership, SCC launched the international Raphael Prize for excellence in contemporary craft, a biennial $5,000 prize with a related exhibition, catalogue, and video featuring the winning artist. She also directed a capital campaign that doubled the size of the facility and created The Studio, a hands-on education center. At Contemporary Craft, she has curated numerous exhibitions, many of which traveled to other cities, including “Home/land: Artists, Immigration, and Identity,” “The Art of the Book,” “Perchance to Dream,” and “Art of the Spirit,” among others. In 2011, she curated Trio of Elements: A Collaboration in Wood, Clay and Silk featuring three artists with Japan-US ties, at the Japanese Information and Cultural Center of the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC. She has served as guest juror for many regional and national exhibitions.

Previous positions include Program Manager at Pittsburgh Glass Center; Artistic Coordinator for “Aliquippa Embraces Art,” a site-specific, community-based art exhibition in an aging steel community; and freelance contributor of art reviews to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. From 1975 to 1992 Janet worked for Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, in several positions including Manager of Media Relations, Assistant to the President, and Director of Public Programs & Services.

Through International Partnerships Among Museums Janet spent eight weeks in residence at the Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan in 1990. Janet has served on many non-profit boards including Touchstone Center for Crafts, Neighbors in the Strip, the Urban League of Pittsburgh, and the PA Federation of Museums & Historical Organizations. She was Local Arrangements Chair for the AAM Conference held in Pittsburgh in 1988; and local chair for the 2003 national conference of the Craft Organizations Development Association (CODA) in Pittsburgh. Currently, she is a Board Member for the Unitarian-Universalist Church of the North Hills and serves on the advisory council of Kearns Spirituality Center.

A past participant in the Museum Management Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, Janet received her BA from Bowling Green State University, and her MA in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh, writing her thesis on Otto Dix’s Metropolis: Gender and Identity in the Weimar Republic. During graduate school in 1994 she received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University’s History of Art & Architecture (HA&A) Department. Since 2010, she has been an adjunct faculty member in the HA&A Department of the University of Pittsburgh, teaching Museum Studies Seminars in which the the class created exhibitions drawing on the University Art Gallery’s permanent collection (2010: SLAG: What’s Next After Industry?; 2011: The Imprint of War: Artists Respond in Print; 2012: Face Value: (De)Constructing Identity in Portraiture). Janet has presented papers at national conferences on both arts management and art historical subjects.