Curated by Amelia Jones, Robert Day Professor and Vice Dean of Faculty and Research at the USC Roski School of Art & Design, Ken Gonzales-Day: History’s “Nevermade” spans more than 30 years and features over 100 works. The exhibition brings together Gonzales-Day’s photographs, drawings, paintings, video, and research to explore cultural memory, race, and place in the United States. Gonzales-Day coined the term “nevermade” to describe imagined historical documents—works that challenge who writes history, what is included, and what is left out. The exhibition traces his career through seven thematic sections: from early drawings and student works, to investigations of lynching in the American West, to deconstructions of racial bias in museum collections, collaborative portraits responding to moments of crisis, public artworks, and recent series reexamining colonial-era landscapes and archives. Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964, Santa Clara, CA) focuses on interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded photographic projects that consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems. Gonzales-Day has received awards from the California Community Foundation, COLA, Creative Capital, and Art Matters. Fellowships include The Rockefeller foundation in Bellagio, Italy; The Terra Foundation in Gervany, France; The Getty GRI; Smithsonian SARF and SAAM fellowships; and the Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography in 2017. Gonzales-Day holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Art at Scripps College. In 2018, he was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. His exhaustive research and book Lynching in the West, 1850-1935 (Duke Univ. Press, 2006) led to a re-evaluation of the history of lynching in the U.S. The book shed light on the little-known history of frontier justice and vigilantism. Gonzales-Day’s work can be found in prominent collections, including: J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The National Gallery Art, Washington, DC; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Williamson Gallery, Scripps College; Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris; Pomona College Museum of Art; Eileen Norton Harris Foundation; 21C Museum Hotel, Louisville, KY; City of Los Angeles; and Metropolitan Transit Authority, Los Angeles, among others.