Kathy Gaye Shiroki

Kathy Gaye Shiroki is an artist, museum educator, and teacher. She has worked at the Burchfield Penney Art Center since 2007, teaches in the Art and Design Department at SUNY Buffalo State (BSU), and creates innovative programs that enhance learning within a museum setting. Shiroki was the Gallery Coordinator at the BSC Czurles-Nelson Gallery for twelve years and curated an exhibition of Craig LaRotonda’s work in conjunction with his exhibition at the Burchfield Penney, Divine Messengers. She was awarded three Bacon Awards for Western New York artists to create wall drawings on the BSU campus: Fotini Galanes, Edreys Wajed, and Muhammad Zaman.

Shiroki’s approach to engagement with art is best understood as creating a “conversation” with a work of art and finding entry points for diverse experiences through that interaction. At the Burchfield Penney, she developed several new gallery tours, including Peer to Peer Tours (curriculum-based interactive peer tours for and with college students), Gallery Conversations (an interactive gallery tour with visitor perspectives), The Art of Looking Twice (a program developing observation skills), and The Art of Business (a program connecting business strategies to the viewing of art).

Kathy Gaye Shiroki has over thirty years of experience working in modern and contemporary art museums. She moved to Buffalo, New York, in 1994 to work in the Education Department at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, now Buffalo AKG Art Museum. There, she created interactive hands-on installations in the galleries inspired by the artwork exhibited. Her passion for creating interactive art, along with working in a museum setting, was integrated at the Albright-Knox and later at the Burchfield Penney, where Western New York artists were invited to create their own hands-on spaces in the Useum™. Shiroki worked with Roberley Bell, Fotini Galanes, Kari Achatz, Nick Napierala, Shasti O’Leary Soudant, Alfonso Volo, Julie Lewitzky, Jacqueline Welch, and Patrick Robideau.

Kathy Gaye Shiroki earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego, her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Temple University, Tyler School of Art, and her associate degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology, School of American Craftsmen. Shiroki’s awards include the Western States Arts Federation Fellowship in sculpture, the Wyoming Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, Art Walk, The City of San Diego, and research grants from the University of California, San Diego. She has had solo exhibitions in New York, California, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as group exhibitions in Virginia, Tennessee, North Dakota, Minnesota, Arizona, Washington, and Utah. Her work has been featured in publications such as A Hidden Agenda, WESTAFF, NEA, Art Bound, Under Wraps, Artweek, Seattle Weekly, and The Los Angeles Times, where her large-scale installation Living Room Window, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-04-14-ca-1654-story.html honoring a woman’s everyday life, was reviewed.