Courtney M. Leonard
BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO

Sept 20 – Dec 6, 2024
Fall Opening Celebration and Concert: Thursday, September 19, 5:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Artist Talk in Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall 
UMCA and Bezanson Recital Hall

The artist Courtney M. Leonard, a citizen of the Shinnecock Nation of Long Island, explores marine biology, Indigenous food sovereignty, migration, and human environmental impact through visual logbooks that investigate the multiple definitions of the term "breach.”

Her exhibition at the University Museum of Contemporary Art is the result of a multi-year artist residency hosted by the UMCA and the UMass College of Natural Sciences. Leonard researched within UMass’ expansive Natural History Collections and selected objects to inspire her newest body of work. BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO, includes paintings, sculptures, and video based on the life and kinship ties of Staccato, a North Atlantic Right Whale killed by a ship strike in 1999, whose remains are housed in the UMass collections. 

Courtney M. Leonard earned her Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. She received a Best of Division in Sculpture from Eiteljorg Indian Market in 2011. Leonard’s work is in the permanent public collections of the United States Art In Embassies, the Crocker Art Museum, the Heard Museum, ASU’s Art Museum and Ceramic Research Center, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of the North, the Mystic Seaport Museum, and the Pomona Museum of Art.

BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO was created in partnership with the UMass College of Natural Sciences and is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Office of the Provost, The Class of 1961 Artists’ Residency Fund, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the UMass Natural History Collections and the UMassFive College Credit Union. Significant research and exhibition contributions came from Kathrine Doyle, staff in the UMass Biology Dept and Vertebrate Collections Manager for the UMass Natural History Collections, Tristram Seidler, Curator of the UMass Herbarium, and Michelle Staudinger, Adjunct Faculty, UMass Department of Environmental Conservation and Associate Faculty, University of Maine, School of Marine Sciences. Emily Volmar, a UMass undergraduate Natural Resource Conservation major, was a summer Art & Science research assistant for this project. Her work and that of UMass Postdoctoral Researcher Amy Teffer was supported by the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

     
   

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