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Leadership
Meet the CCA leadership team
David C. Howse, president
David C. Howse, president
David Howse, the 10th president of California College of the Arts, oversees the academic, administrative, and financial facets of the institution. With a focus on leveraging current institutional momentum, he is dedicated to advancing the college's goal of expanding visibility, reach, and impact.
Before assuming the role of president, Howse held key positions at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. Notably, he served as Vice President of the Office of the Arts and concurrently as the Executive Director of ArtsEmerson. With over two decades of experience, Howse has successfully led arts organizations primarily within educational institutions, through strategic visioning, fundraising, and community building.
TT Takemoto interim provost
TT Takemoto, interim provost
TT Takemoto is a queer Japanese American artist and scholar whose work explores Asian American history, sexuality, and identity. They engage with archival materials and found footage using tactile, labor-intensive techniques such as manipulating 16mm and 35mm film emulsion with clear tape, razor blades, and nail polish. Through these methods, Takemoto evokes immersive queer fantasies involving themes like butch surgeons and homoerotic breadmaking, honoring the lives of queer Asian Americans who lived, loved, and labored together in the prewar era and beyond.
Takemoto’s work has been exhibited at prominent venues like Asian Art Museum, Cantor Arts Center, and de Young Museum, as well as internationally at Documenta (Kassel, Germany) and Gwangju Biennale (South Korea). Their films have screened at festivals worldwide, earning accolades like the Grand Jury Prize for Best Experimental Film at Slamdance. A professor and former dean at California College of the Arts, Takemoto co-founded Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts and served on the Queer Cultural Center’s Board of Directors for 15 years. They live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jacqueline Francis, dean of Humanities and Sciences
Jacqueline Francis, dean of Humanities and Sciences
Jacqueline Francis is an art historian, curator, and creative writer. She researches and writes modern and contemporary US art histories; she has a special interest in the construction of past and present racialized identities and identifications which she considers in the critical framework of social art history. She is the author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (2012), the first book-length study of interwar expressionist American painting, scrutinized through the lens of critical race art history. Francis has edited and co-edited several books dedicated to the works and influence of historical and present-day artists: Adia Millett (2020 and 2023); Romare Bearden: American Modernists (2011); Is Now the Time for Joyous Rage? [on Lorraine O’Grady] (2023); and Sargent Claude Johnson (2024). She has published essays in numerous exhibition catalogs, peer-reviewed journals, and reference texts, and presented her research at museums, conferences, and colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Asia. She has been a visiting professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art and San Francisco State University.
Helen Maria Nugent, dean of Design
Helen Maria Nugent, dean of Design
Helen Maria Nugent leads CCA’s undergraduate and graduate Design programs, guided by the belief that a design education prepares students to both envision and build a better future for all. Hallmarks of Nugent’s approach include her commitment to ensuring designers are well-versed in critical thinking and equipped with the skills to craft tangible, desirable, and sustainable alternatives that address real-world problems. Since joining CCA in 2017, she has worked extensively to establish a collective vision for how the college’s expansion and new custom-built environment situated in San Francisco will support a future-focused design curriculum.
Nugent’s co-developed curriculum for a new discipline category called Design Arts for The National YoungArts Foundation integrates architectural, product, interior, graphic, and fashion design. In her practice, Nugent explores the role of sensory perception in art and design. She is also co-founder of Haelo Design, an independent, research-oriented studio whose project TacTiles, commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago, allows visitors with sight impairment to experience the museum through their fingertips.
Sunny A. Smith, dean of Fine Arts
Sunny A. Smith, dean of Fine Arts
Sunny A. Smith oversees CCA’s diverse Fine Arts division, equipping students with the skills necessary to create and critique art that is both self-expressive and meaningful to the world around them. Smith's teaching philosophy, as well as their artistic practice, embrace critical dialogue and dynamic exchange, whether in the form of classroom discussions, large-scale participatory projects, performative sculptures, or studio-made objects. During their earlier years at CCA, they chaired the Sculpture program and held several leadership positions across the college.
Smith’s internationally recognized artistic practice investigates the cultural phenomenon of historical reenactment and the role of craft in the construction of white nationalism, and their work incorporates a variety of artistic methods to offer new interpretations of America’s fraught history and the impact of war. They produced more than 25 solo exhibitions, installations, performances, and artist-led participatory projects for venues such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Public Art Fund, the Arts Club of Chicago, and S!GNAL Center for Contemporary Art. They have exhibited their work in survey exhibitions at museums including MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, MASS MoCA, and the Tang Museum.
Keith Krumwiede, dean of Architecture
Keith Krumwiede, dean of Architecture
Dedicated to situating the Architecture division’s curriculum and pedagogy in its immediate context, Keith Krumwiede oversees programs that allow CCA students to apply what they’ve learned to impact their environment. In the Bay Area, that means building architectural solutions to mitigate a broad range of challenges, from ecological vulnerabilities to steep socioeconomic inequalities. Since joining the college, Krumwiede has guided the launch of CCA Architecture Books, a new publishing imprint.
Krumwiede, joined CCA from the American Academy in Rome, researches the relationship between architecture and its cultural, social, and political milieus. His book Atlas of Another America: An Architectural Fiction (Park Books, 2017) offers a critique of both American culture—reflecting upon the world we’ve made and the world we might have made—and architecture culture, lampooning its hubris and its often-complicit relationship to power and privilege. At the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, he exhibited The Monuments of Another America, a 50-foot-long scenic wallpaper based on Xavier Mader’s 1814 wallpaper, The Monuments of Paris.
Daisy Nam, director and chief curator, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
Daisy Nam, Director and Chief Curator, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
Daisy Nam’s approach to curation and program development is noted for its focus on fostering dialogues with artists to develop new work that connects contemporary art with broader societal issues. Her tenure at Ballroom Marfa was marked by exhibitions and programs that engaged with critical themes and expanded the boundaries of artistic expression. Of particular note are the exhibitions Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago; Kenneth Tam: Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory; and Tongues of Fire, a group exhibition that included works by artists Jorge Méndez Blake, Jesse Chun, Adriana Corral, JJJJJerome Ellis, and Nakai Flotte, which explored the ways in which language has been suppressed, silenced, or obscured. Nam has also led the process for the development of Ballroom Marfa’s forthcoming 20th anniversary publication, published jointly with Monacelli Press.
Prior to Ballroom Marfa, Nam served as the Assistant Director at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University from 2015 to 2019. In that role, she worked on a number of exhibitions including Matt Keegan: Replicate (2018), We Just Fit, You and I (2018), Renée Green: Pacing (2018) as well as performances including Kerry Tribe: Critical Mass (2015). Nam also collaborated with several widely recognized artists on residencies including Liz Magor, Phil Collins, Lorraine O’Grady and public programs, including Basma Alsharif, Charles Atlas, Morgan Bassichis, Douglas Crimp, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jessi Reaves, and Aki Sasamoto.
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Know the basics about CCA
About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) educates students to shape culture and society through art, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers a rich curriculum of 22 undergraduate and 10 graduate programs taught by a faculty of expert practitioners. Located in the vibrant San Francisco Bay Area, CCA uniquely prepares students for lifelong creative work by fostering social and environmental responsibility, innovation, and community engagement. Graduates are highly sought-after by companies such as Pixar, Apple, IDEO, and Google, and many go on to launch their own successful businesses.
CCA’s newly expanded campus adds 82,300 square feet of space to teach, make, and present art in a continuous indoor-outdoor environment. Designed by world-renowned architecture firm Studio Gang, the new addition brings together 30 academic programs and disciplines, student housing and dining, and interdisciplinary learning.
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