Oakland, CA–February 29, 2008. Charlotte Cotton, department head and curator of photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will present a lecture on Curating Contemporary Photography, on Thursday, April 3, 2008, at 6:45 pm at Mills College. The event is free and open to the public, and will be held in the Danforth Lecture Hall, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA.

Cotton will give an overview of photography as a burgeoning field of contemporary art in the early 21st century. Drawing from research in her book, The Photograph as Contemporary Art (2004), she will highlight some of the prominent directions made by contemporary art photographers. Cotton will also explore the emerging issues driving current photographic practice, and the relationship of contemporary art practice to the rapidly changing cultural values of image making in a digital era.

Cotton recently joined the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where photography will play a prominent role with the addition of its new 60,000-square-foot Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

Cotton was a visiting professor at Yale University in 2006, and has been a visiting critic at the School of Visual Arts; Bard College; Cranbrook Academy of Art; Massachusetts College of Art and Design; and Otis College of Art and Design. She was the curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1993-2004) and head of programming at the Photographers' Gallery (2004-2005) in London.

Her books include Imperfect Beauty (2000), Then Things Went Quiet (2003), Guy Bourdin (2003), and The Photograph as Contemporary Art (2004). She is also the founding editor of www.wordswithoutpictures.org.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 900 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College ranks as one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report and one of the Best 366 Colleges by the Princeton Review.

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