BUFFALO, NY.- After an extensive national search, the board of trustees for The Center for Exploratory & Perceptual Arts (CEPA Gallery) announces the hiring of its next Executive Director, Ben Hickey. A skilled administrator with an excellent curatorial pedigree, Hickey brings 19 years of experience to CEPA. Most recently, he served as Interim Director at the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana. During his seven years as Curator at the Hilliard, he also served as a member of the leadership team responsible for the museum’s inaugural American Alliance of Museums accreditation.

As an artist-founded gallery, CEPA has a long history of supporting experimental and ground-breaking artists who have changed the world of photography. Hickey’s hire will kick off a year-long 50th Anniversary celebration. Community outreach and education, as well as access to excellent studio facilities for photographic artists will continue to be a point of emphasis for CEPA.

Hickey will work for an engaged board of directors and lead a talented staff composed of some of WNY’s most up-and-coming arts professionals. Hickey says, “Our capacity for collaboration is amazing. Current partners include Roswell Park, WNY Council on Occupational Safety and Health, and the AKG Buffalo Art Museum among others.”

Hickey concluded, “I am especially eager to begin a new era of robust, boundary-pushing exhibitions with strong educational components. I want CEPA to thrive and turn heads.”

Located in Buffalo’s historic Market Arcade Complex, CEPA Gallery is a contemporary photography and visual arts center with impact in both local and national communities. With three galleries of changing exhibits and events, multimedia public art installations, arts education programs, and an open-access darkroom and digital photo lab, CEPA creates a vibrant presence in the heart of downtown Buffalo.

Ben Hickey is the Executive Director for the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts in Buffalo, New York. Previously he was curator of exhibitions and Emily Cyr Bridges Endowed Professor of Art at the Hilliard Art Museum on the campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. During his tenure there he served as interim director for nearly a year. Most central to his curatorial practice are projects that blend social history, sense of place, and interdisciplinary collaborations. With over one hundred exhibition credits, artists he has exhibited include Brian Kelly of the Marais Press, Letitia Huckaby, L. Kasimu Harris, Robert C. Tannen, Richard Landry, Pat Phillips, Beili Liu, Sonya Clark, Hasan Elahi, Dawoud Bey, and James Surls.

Hickey’s most recent writing can be found in Envisioning the South: The Roger Houston Ogden Collection (Hilliard Art Museum), Cloudburst: The Work of Matt Kenyon (Baton Rouge Gallery, Louisiana State University School of Art, 2022), Twenty Years of Marais Press: Imprinting a Campus and a Collection (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2022), and Felicific Calculus: Technology as a Social Marker of Race, Class & Economics in Rochester, NY (CEPA Gallery, Booksmart, 2021). Francis Pavy: Forty is forthcoming from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press in late 2024.

In 2023 Hickey received a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Grant to co-present research related to Marais Press on-campus collaborations at the 51st Annual Art Libraries Society of North America in Mexico City. Earlier in his career, he presented Reshaping Our Programming: The Artist in Residence Program at the New York Historical Society in conjunction with an Association of Art Museum Curators annual conference. He has also served as a panelist or consultant for Villa Albertine, the Joan Mitchell Center, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, PhotoNOLA, and the San Antonio Art League.

Earlier in his career, Hickey held positions at the Masur Museum of Art, California Museum of Photography, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and the Arts Council of Buffalo & Erie County. He is an active member of the Association of Art Museum Curators, having served as a trustee from 2015 to 2020. He earned his master’s in art history from the University of California Riverside and his bachelor’s in history from Canisius University.