Visual Arts & Design

Lauren Cross is an artist, curator, and scholar, who holds a MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and a PhD in Multicultural Women's and Gender Studies from Texas Woman's University. She is currently a Senior Lecturer for the Department of Art Education Art History's Interdisciplinary Art and Design Studies (IADS) program, and the founder of the arts non-profit, WoCA Projects, in Fort Worth, Texas. Cross teaches undergraduate courses in the IADS program, such as art and business, the IADS capstone, and understanding art museums. Her teaching champions active-learning, service learning, and social networks with highlights being a student-led ethics symposium in art and design practice in 2016 and a lecture series co-organized with her colleague Dr. Jennifer Way from 2016-2018 entitled Conversations: Art, Politics & North Texas, which brought in art industry professionals, artists, and scholars discussing the impact of politics on the local arts community.

Cross' research addresses critical multicultural approaches in arts practice, arts entrepreneurship, curatorial studies, museum studies, and art history. Cross has been a frequent presenter at academic and public conferences across the country and internationally, and is the director of the award-winning documentary, The Skin Quilt Project, which was produced in 2010 and was an official selection at the 2010 International Black Women's Film Festival in Berkley, CA. Cross has also been recognized for both her art practice and community work, featured in the 2015 Edinburgh Art Festival, selected as a Third Annual Visionary Award winner by Fort Worth Weekly magazine in 2013, named one of Dallas' "100 Creatives" by the Dallas Observer in 2015, and selected as a Visiting Artist for the Center for Creative Connections at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2018.