Overview

Steep Rock Arts Association is a program designed to provide emerging visual Artists and Curators with time, space and professional guidance to explore their work in a supportive, thriving, artistic environment.

Residencies are awarded competitively, at no cost, to national and international emerging artists. Applicants are evaluated by a panel that includes a variety of professionals in the art field. Those selected will be awarded an eight week Residency. Each artist will receive a $10,000 stipend to cover the cost of materials and transportation.

Campus

Steep Rock Arts is located on a 100-acre estate, surrounded by rolling hills, working farms and protected lands.

View our photo gallery to see for yourself.

Board of Trustees

• Erika Klauer, President

  President

  
  Erika Klauer is the President and Founder of Steep Rock Arts. She began the program in 2005. Erika also serves as a Trustee at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and is an active supporter of many not for profit art programs such as BOMB, the Whitney, the Drawing Center and others. She also works to support the Washington community, serving on the Board of the Washington Citizens's Scholarships and actively supporting environmental groups in the area as well.
  
  Erika is currently Managing Director at Jennison Associates, the investment firm in New York City. She specializes in technology research. She is a frequent guest speaker on the topic of alternative energy investment at universities and local high schools. Prior to joining Jennison in 2001, she was the Managing Director and Global Head of Semiconductors for Deutsche Bank Alex Brown. She graduated from Georgetown University.
  
• Sima Familant

  Secretary

  
  Ms. Familant brings 10 years of experience in the art field with a specialty in the contemporary arts and is the founder of Sima Familant: Private Curatorial and Advisory Services, a business focused on building private collections over a lifetime. Prior to this business, Ms. Familant received her MA in Post War and Contemporary Art from Sotheby's Institute in London and has worked in the gallery field since 1996 beginning in Washington, DC at Baumgartner Galleries. She relocated to New York to become the director of Greene Naftali Gallery where she curated two critically acclaimed group exhibitions. For the next four years, Ms. Familant was the Associate Director at Greenberg Von Doren Gallery on Fifth Avenue, where she was involved with artists' estates, post-war secondary market material, as well as developing the careers and profiles of the gallery's mid career and emerging artists.
  
• Debra Singer
  Executive Director and Chief Curator, The Kitchen, New York
  
  Appointed in July 2004, Debra Singer is the executive director and chief curator of The Kitchen, one of New York City’s oldest nonprofit, multidisciplinary arts organizations. Ms. Singer previously served as the associate curator of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2000-2004) as well as the branch manager and curator of the Whitney Museum at Altria (1997-2000).
  
  For The Kitchen, Singer has organized solo exhibitions by Edgar Arceneaux, Yto Barrada, Christian Jankowski, Matthew Buckingham and Joachim Koester, Tracy and the Plastics, and Walid Raad/The Atlas Group. She also co-organized several groups exhibitions, including Just Kick It Till It Breaks, featuring work by Carol Bove, Bozidar Brazda, Fia Bäckstrom, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Adam Helms, Cory McCorkle, Dave McKenzie, Josephine Meckseper, and others, and Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music, featuring experimental music scores by thirty-one composers. Among her current projects are solo exhibitions by the Florida-based artist Jose Alvarez and the Swiss-based artist Mai-Thu Perret.
  
  During her tenure at the Whitney, she served as a co-curator of the 2004 Whitney Biennial and 2002 Whitney Biennial and organized solo exhibitions of new work by artists such as Joseph Grigely, Arturo Herrera, Helen Mirra, Jennifer Pastor, Paul Pfeiffer, Shahzia Sikander, Paul Sietsema, and Sarah Sze, among others. She was also a co-curator of BitStreams (2001), a group exhibition of art enabled by digital technologies; and was responsible for the New York presentation of the touring exhibition The Quilts of Gee's Bend (2003). In addition to organizing visual arts exhibitions, she was the Museum’s primary performance curator, producing an ongoing series of live music, dance, theater, literary, and performance art events.
  
  Outside of The Kitchen, Ms. Singer is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and art schools as well as an active participant on juries and panels nationwide for both the visual and performing arts. She also writes periodically for Artforum and serves as a board member for Cabinet magazine. A graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, she earned her MA in art history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her BA in political science from Princeton University with a Certificate in the Dance and Theater Program.
  
• Linda Norden

  Vice President

  
  Linda Norden, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Fogg Art Museum since 1998, also teaches in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. Ms. Norden has curated exhibitions on Ed Ruscha, Andreas Gursky and Bernd and Hilla Becher, John Wesly, and Tadashi Kawmata.
  
  Prior to moving to Boston, Ms. Norden was instrumental in the development of the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies in Art and Contemporary Culture, where she also taught art history and criticism. She received her undergraduate degree at Brown University and graduate degrees from Columbia University.
  
• Dennis Kyte
  Dennis Kyte is a renowned artist, author, illustrator and designer who began as an art director for Leo Burnett Advertising Agency and CBS Television in Chicago, then to California to open his own firm, STARBUCK, the innovative soft luggage business. Regarded as a forward and trend inspiring fashion company, STARBUCK was featured by prestigious fashion retailers worldwide.
  
  Kyte currently runs his own design firm, Dennis Kyte Inc. His clients include Estee Lauder, The GAP, Whitney Communications, Fieldcrest, The International Herald Tribune, Stuart Weitzman, Towle Silver, Martha Stewart and Brunschwig et Fils who premiered his collection of designs for wallpaper and fabric which have been featured prominently it the press in the USA and Europe.
  
  He has written and illustrated several original children’s books including
  The Last Elegant Bear, To the Heart of a Bear and The Adventures of Puppy – A Gentleman Rabbit. He established the Last Elegant Bear Library program, donating complete libraries of children’s books to the pediatric departments of several leading American hospitals.
  
  Kyte’s drawings and watercolors have been exhibited worldwide. He published a collection of watercolors in the book, The Botanical Footwear of Dennis Kyte and his work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum, The Brooklyn Museum and The New Orleans Museum of Art.
  
  Kyte currently lives in Washington, Connecticut where for the past several years he has joined Sotheby's International Realty and added architecture to his creative ventures, designing and overseeing construction of a number of prominent distinguished residential properties. His additional interests include that of developing his own personal art collection focusing on Art Brut, Naïve, Surrealist, Outsider and Contemporary art.
  
• Samuel Messer

  Assistant Treasurer

  
  Mr. Messer received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union School of Art in 1976 and an M.F.A. from Yale in 1981. His work may be found in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Mr. Messer has received awards including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant in 1984, the Engelhard Award in 1985, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 1993, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996. He has recently collaborated with Paul Auster on The Story of My Typewriter, and with Denis Johnson on Cloud of Chalk.
  
  Mr. Messer was appointed a senior critic at Yale in 1994 and in 2005 was appointed associate dean and professor (adjunct). He also serves as director of the art division of the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk.
  
• William von Mueffling

  Assistant Secretary

  
  William von Mueffling is the founder of Cantillon Capital Management, a global money management firm. Mr. von Mueffling was previously Managing Director of Lazard Asset Management, where he managed the Lazard European Opportunities and Lazard Worldwide Opportunities Portfolios, whose combined assets approximated $3 billion. Prior to joining Lazard, Mr. von Mueffling was a European company analyst at Deutsche Bank where he was solely responsible for the entire European media sector. He earned an MBA from Columbia Business University and a BA from Columbia University, where he is currently on the adjunct faculty of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing, a premier knowledge center within Columbia Business School for the practice and theory of investing.
  
  Mr. von Mueffling is also the Treasurer of French American Culture Exchange ("FACE"), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting contemporary creative work in the context of French-American cultural and educational exchange. FACE administers programs and projects in dance, education, film, music, theater, and the visual arts. FACE is overseen by a a Board of Trustees and works in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
  
• Marianne Boesky

  Treasurer

  
  Marianne Boesky, the owner of Marianne Boesky Gallery, has over twenty years of experience in the art field, with a specialty in contemporary art. Since founding her gallery nearly ten years ago, she has dedicated significant time and expertise in developing and supporting young artists, and is proud to have successfully introduced many of them to the international community through shows in her gallery. Ms. Boesky is also an active member of the New York City community, where she lives with her husband and daughter. Marianne received her Bachelor of Arts from Middlebury College.
  
• Kiki Smith
  Biography is unavailable at this time
  

Steep Rock Alumni

2008

Demetrius Oliver

Marc Handelman

Nathalie Djurberg

2007

Ernesto Caivano

Sophie von Hellermann

Barnaby Furnas

2006

Cameron Martin

Francesca DiMattio

2005

Wangechi Mutu

Mailing List

Click here to join our mailing list to hear about residency award winners and artist receptions at Steep Rock Arts

Steep Rock Land Trust

Steep Rock Arts is not associated with Steep Rock Land Trust, but we encourage our artists and visitors to explore this important non-profit organization. Steep Rock Land Trust has more than 1750 acres in reservation, with many wonderful hiking trails along Washington CT's stunning river banks and hillsides. For more information, please visit www.steeprockassoc.org