Established in 1997, the Annual Artist Interviews have long been a highly anticipated event at CAA conferences, offering members and attendees a unique opportunity to hear artists discuss their life, work, and career trajectory.
I had the pleasure of introducing two incredible artists during the 114th CAA Annual Conference Annual Artist Interviews!
SHAUN LEONARDO IN CONVERSATION WITH DAWIT PETROS → February 20, 2026
Shaun Leonardo was in conversation with Dawit Petros.
*"Shaun Leonardo’s multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, usually through the definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice is participatory and invested in a process of embodiment.
Leonardo’s fifteen-plus-year career as an artist and arts administrator has centered on community engagement, public programming, and experimental pedagogy. From 2016 to 2024, Leonardo played a pivotal role at Recess, co-directing its evolution as a socially engaged arts organization and launching the Assembly diversion program. Based in Brooklyn, Leonardo received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice, and A Blade of Grass. His work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, the High Line, the New Museum, and Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, and has been profiled in The New York Times and on CNN. He is Executive Director of Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens."
JOYCE KOZLOFF IN CONVERSATION WITH NANCY PRINCENTHAL → February 20, 2026
Joyce Kozloff was in conversation with Nancy Princenthal.
*"Joyce Kozloff has been an activist in the feminist art movement on both coasts since 1970 and was a member of the Pattern and Decoration movement in the ’70s. Cartography and mapping have been important foundations of her work since 1990 and are structures through which she explores the range of human knowledge and the imposition of imperial will.
After a sustained commitment to public art throughout the 1980s and ’90s, she returned to a studio practice that encompasses painting, sculpture, installations, printmaking, and photography. Two glass mosaic and ceramic tile public works—Parkside Portals (2018) for the MTA Art and Design Program, and Memory and Time (2021) for the General Services Administration (GSA). Her work is included in public collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Jewish Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art. The survey Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories was on view at the Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York, through April 2026. She has been represented by the DC Moore Gallery in New York since 1995."
The interviews were held on Friday, February 20, 4:30–7:00 p.m. CT at the Hilton Chicago and were livestreamed via YouTube. Recordings will be available. Keep an eye on the CAA YouTube channel for access.