Dr. Julie Sasse is Chief Curator and Curator of Modern, Contemporary, and Latin American Art at the Tucson Museum of Art. Since joining TMA, she has organized more than 90 solo and group exhibitions of regional, national, and international artists. Among her group exhibitions are Trouble in Paradise: Examining Discourse in Nature and Society; Paint on Metal: Modern and Contemporary Explorations and Discoveries; Into the Night: Modern and Contemporary Art and the Nocturne Tradition; and The Figure Examined: Masterworks from the Kasser Mochary Art Foundation. Her solo exhibitions include artists Andy Warhol, Ai Weiwei, Alan Sonfist, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Henri Matisse, Deborah Butterfield, Ansel Adams, and Rose Cabat.

​

Sasse received a Clark Art Institute fellowship in 2008 for her book, Trouble in Paradise, a Latino Museum Studies Fellowship in Washington, DC, in 2007, and a Louise Foucar Marshall Foundation Graduate Fellowship for her dissertation, Blurred Boundaries: A History of Hybrid Beings and the Works of Patricia Piccinini, in 2013. Sasse holds a B.A. from Southern Illinois University, a M.F.A. and a M.A. in Art History from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. She also attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

​

The author of more than 35 catalogues, books, and published essays, Sasse wrote the monograph on James Havard (Hudson Hills Press, 2006); Trouble in Paradise: Examining Discord Between Nature and Society (2008); and the feature essay for Contemporary Art of the Southwest (Schiffer, 2012) and The Figure Examined: Masterworks from the Kasser Mochary Art Foundation (2014).

​

Dr. Sasse was Gallery Director/Curator at the University of Arizona, 1995-2000. Managing five non-collecting spaces on the U of A campus, she organized more than 100 exhibitions, including solo shows of works by William T. Wiley, Harmony Hammond, Ruth Weisberg, and Kadir Lopez Nieves. Group exhibitions include: Hindsight: Art Historical References in Contemporary Art; Abject Lands/Personal Horizons; an exchange exhibition of watercolors with the Museo de Acuarela in Mexico, Intercambio; and Shanghai Ink: Contemporary Works in the Ink Tradition from China.

In the 1980s, Sasse directed the Elaine Horwitch Galleries in Scottsdale and Sedona, AZ; Santa Fe, NM; and Palm Springs, CA, focusing on international and regional artists. There she organized more than 300 exhibitions, including works by Larry Rivers, David Hockney, Louise Nevelson, Peter Voulkos, and Beatrice Wood. She also taught studio art at Arizona State University and Eastern Washington University from 1974 to 1977; and courses in gallery management at The University of Arizona from 1995 to 2002. Sasse has served on numerous panels and jury committees at such institutions as the Contemporary Art Center in Las Vegas; the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the University of Texas in El Paso; and the IV Annual Computer Art Biennial in Rzeszow, Poland. Sasse’s fellowship at the Women’s International Study Center will focus on her research and writing for her book, Art Gal: Elaine Horwitch and the Rise of Contemporary Art in the American Southwest.