Lauren Benetua
Curatorial Assistant at Pro Arts – Oakland
Archival Assistant at Geoffrey Dunn Private Collections – Santa Cruz
Lauren Benetua is an arts advocate and aspiring curator in love with art for social change, especially from indigenous perspectives and diasporic voices. She takes keen interest in innovative and informal, self-directed education. As a scholar of art and culture, she is dedicated to improve social and cultural bridging through unexpected and unconventional ways, especially participatory community arts projects. Lauren has played roles of Youth and School Programs Developer (Museum of African Diaspora; Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History), Pop Up Museum Facilitator (Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History), and Programs Assistant (San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles). She currently serves as Curatorial Assistant at Pro Arts in downtown Oakland. Outside of her professional life, her long-standing interests focus on ways indigenous textiles, cloth, and clothing are forms of transmitting knowledge, history, and cultural identity, and can be used as tools to uplift the (often marginalized) women and communities from which they originate. Off the clock, if she is not around a museum or gallery, she would rather be trailblazing, cliff jumping, or tree climbing. She also thinks some of the best things in life are declared in sequences involving the letter ‘b’: beaches, burritos, brews.
Interests: Social impact | Effective documentation | Community building and organizing through the arts
Skills: Social and cultural bridging | Developing and facilitating participatory community arts
EAP Fellowship Research Team: Cultural Equity
