Dr. Amelia Kraehe Associate Vice President, Equity in the Arts
Arizona Arts

Kraehe co-founder and co-director of the Racial Justice Studio, a transdisciplinary incubator for the study and practice of intersectional anti-racism in and through the arts. She is also Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture Education in the School of Art and Faculty Affiliate in Human Rights Practice. She is recognized for her research on arts equity as well as her publications, workshops, podcasts, and public lectures that illuminate the roles race, racism, and anti-racism play in arts institutions and the education of arts professionals. Kraehe has received numerous honors and awards for her leadership and scholarly contributions to the field of art education.

• Kraehe joins Arizona Arts as first AVP for Equity in the Arts
• Racial Justice Studio to promote understanding of anti-racism

Her latest research examines how the arts and arts education can challenge, as well as contribute to, systems of inequality. She employs interdisciplinary theories and methodologies that draw from the social sciences, visual and cultural studies, critical race theory, women of color feminisms, and justice studies. In 2018 she co-edited The Palgrave Handbook on Race and the Arts in Education and Pedagogies in the Flesh: Case Studies on the Embodiment of Sociocultural Differences in Education. Her newest book project is Race and Art Education, published in Sept. 2021.

Her research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals, including International Journal of Education and the Arts, Race Ethnicity and Education, The Urban Review, and Equity and Excellence in Education, and in edited collections, such as Intersectionality and Urban Education: Identities, Policies, Spaces and Power (2014) and The Education of Black Males in a Post-Racial World (2012).

She served as senior editor of Art Education: The Journal of the National Art Education Association (2017-2020) and co-chair of the Art Education Research Institute (2019-2021). She is an active member of the American Educational Research Association and an elected member of the Council for Policy Studies in Art Education. Kraehe has served on the editorial review boards of the journals Art Education, International Journal of Education and the Arts, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, and Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy and has been an invited peer reviewer for The Urban Review, Curriculum Inquiry, and Educational Studies.

Amy’s teaching and leadership is informed by a breadth of professional experiences. She regularly consults for national arts councils, art museums, and state arts education agencies. She taught in economically vulnerable public schools and later was a gallery educator in an art museum program designed for underrepresented groups of middle grade students. As a project director with the Institute of Community, University, and School Partnerships, she co-developed and administered arts-intensive learning and leadership experiences for Black and Brown youth on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining the University of Arizona faculty, she earned tenure at the University of North Texas where she also served as a peer-mentor for women of color faculty and was engaged in the community as a consultant for the area’s largest school district, helping to reimagine arts-rich education in urban schools.

She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Cultural Studies in Education and an M.A. in Art Education from The University of Texas at Austin.  She graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College in Massachusetts with a B.A. in Studio Art and Economics minor.