Lawrence Rinder is the former Director and Chief Curator of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. He came to the University of California from the California College of the Arts where he was Dean of the College and Dean of Graduate Studies. Previously, he was the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he organized exhibitions including “The American Effect,” "2002 Biennial," and "Tim Hawkinson," which was given the 2005 award for best monographic exhibition in a New York museum by the United States chapter of the International Association of Art Critics. Prior to the Whitney, Rinder was founding director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, in San Francisco, and served as Assistant Director and Curator for Twentieth-Century Art at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Among the many exhibitions he organized at these institutions are “Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective” (2020),” “Barry McGee,” (2012, curated with Dena Beard), “Knowledge of Higher Worlds: Rudolf Steiner's Blackboard Drawings” (1997), “Louise Bourgeois: Drawings” (1996), and “In a Different Light” (1995, curated with Nayland Blake). Rinder received a B.A. in art from Reed College and an M.A. in art history from Hunter College. He has held teaching positions at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and Deep Springs College. He has published poetry and art criticism in Zyzzyva, Artforum, nest, The Village Voice, Fillip, and Parkett. Art Life: Selected Writings, 1991-2005, published by Gregory R. Miller and Company in Spring 2006, is his first book of essays. His play, “The Wishing Well,” co-authored with Kevin Killian, premiered in 2006 and he is the author (with Colter Jacobsen) of the photo-text novella, Tuleyome (Publication Studio, 2011).