Oakland, CA - Catherine Wagner, internationally renowned Mills College professor of art, has received a 2007 Artadia Award for photography. Recently announced by New York City-based Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue, the award honors ten San Francisco Bay Area artists.

Employing a scientific and intuitive approach to her photography, Wagner's work unveil new narratives which form a hybrid history and allow the viewer myriad possibilities for interpretation. Her current body of work records the historical classification of light bulbs.

A panel of reviewers, including curators Daniell Cornell, director of contemporary art projects, de Young Museum of Art, San Francisco; Sylvie Gilbert, interim director, Visual Arts Program, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada; and Mary Jane Jacob, chair, Department of Sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, conducted studio visits in early November and selected ten artists to earn the award from a record number of 520 applications. The Artadia Awards are open to Bay Area visual artists in any medium.

A faculty member at Mills since 1978, Wagner works with archetypes of society and transforms them into conceptual images investigating the construction of culture. She has been a keen observer of the built environment for more than 20 years. Her work is represented in significant public collections worldwide, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Bibliotheque National de Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).

Wagner is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. In 2001, she was named one of Time magazine's "Fine Arts Innovators of the Year."

Artadia has partnered with local foundations and private patrons of the arts who recognize the importance of providing unrestricted funding to visual artists at the local level. This is the sixth cycle of Artadia Awards in the Bay Area; Artadia also administers successful programs and awards in Boston, Chicago, and Houston.

Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering innovative degree programs to approximately 900 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Ranked 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, Mills provides a dynamic liberal arts education fostering women's leadership, social responsibility, and creativity. Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, on 135 lush acres, Mills was recently selected by the New York Times as one of three outstanding California colleges for students to consider. 

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