Independent Curator, Critic, Art Professor, and Disability Advocate

California

Amanda Cachia is an independent curator and critic from Sydney, Australia. She received her PhD in art history, theory, and criticism from the University of California, San Diego in 2017. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art; curatorial studies and activism; exhibition design and access; decolonizing the museum; and the politics of embodied disability language in visual culture. She is currently working on a monograph entitled Contemporary Disability Art: Access Aesthetics and Institutional Critique (under review). Her edited volume, Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation, was published by Routledge in 2022 and includes more than 40 contributors from around the world. Cachia currently teaches art history, visual culture, and curatorial studies at Otis College of Art and Design, California Institute of the Arts, California State University Long Beach, and California State University San Marcos.

Cachia has curated approximately 40 exhibitions, many of which contain social justice themes and content. Her critical writing has been published in eight edited volumes; numerous exhibition catalogs and art journals including Artforum, CAA Reviews, Canadian Art, Art Monthly Australia and On Curating; and peer-reviewed academic journals such as Art Journal, South Atlantic Quarterly, Design and Culture, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Journal of Visual Art Practice, Museums and Social Issues, and The Senses and Society. She has also contributed an entry to Disability in American Life: An Encyclopedia of Concepts, Policies, and Controversies, focusing on disability and contemporary art.

She has participated in numerous international and national conferences and related events within the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East, and has guest lectured at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), State University of New York (SUNY) at Purchase, Ontario College of Art and Design, Ryerson University, New York University, Goldsmiths College, Sydney College of the Arts, and Maryland Institute College of Art, among others. Cachia has served as a disability arts consultant for the Metropolitan Museum in New York; visiting critic for the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City; and as a panelist for the Rubin Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Canada Council for the Arts.