Presenters Spotlight: 2023 ASA Personal Property Appraisal Symposium

ASA’s 2023 Personal Property Appraisal Symposium is set to take place April 30-May 2, 2023 at the Kimpton Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara, CA. The event is tailored to personal property appraisers and allied professionals who’ll gain insights into key markets, benefit from scholarly sessions, connect with fellow experts—all while exploring the art, culture and beauty of the Central Coast.

Below is a spotlight of the event’s presenters.

PRESENTER HIGHLIGHTS

Dr. Pamela Jill Huckins, Associate Professor, Liberal Arts, University of Arizona Global Campus

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Yale University Divinity School, Dr. Huckins received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University where she specialized in Spanish Baroque and Colonial Art and Architecture.  Her doctoral dissertation is entitled “The Art of the Alta California Missions, 1769–ca. 1834,” from which she has expanded her expertise to include the art and architecture of later-19th and 20th century California.  Dr. Huckins’ has published studies on iconographic, theological, and cultural aspects of the history of art in California and was a contributor to the international art exhibition “Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain.” She lectures regularly in Mexico and the United States on issues of indigenism, colonialism, cultural and political history, and cultural transference.   Dr. Huckins is the past chair of the City of Ventura Historic Preservation Committee. Additionally, Dr. Huckins actively coaches Neuroboxing, Rhythm Boxing, and Spin Cycling. She is Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at University of Arizona Global Campus. Her professional work includes fine art consultation services and collections management.

Michael Dawson, Appraiser, Fine Art Photography and Rare Book Dealer, Dawson’s Book Shop/Michael Dawson Gallery

Michael Dawson is a private dealer and appraiser specializing in rare books and fine art photography including historical photographs of California and the Southwest. Michael has written widely on photography and has owned and operated his own gallery as well as the celebrated Dawson’s Book Shop in Los Angeles – a business established by his grandfather in 1905. He is a candidate member of the American Society of Appraisers, a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, (ILAB) and the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD). Michael is known as an expert in the history of Southern California photography. His writing on the subject is included in LA’s Early Moderns: Art/Architecture/Photography published by Balcony Press in 2003 and Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Los Angeles published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2005. Michael contributed an essay for the publication from the Book Club of California titled William Reagh. A Long Walk Downtown: Photographs of Los Angeles & Southern California, 1936-1991 published in 2012. Michael is member of the Board of Directors with the Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles (PAC LA)

Morgana Blackwelder, Senior Vice President, John Moran Auctioneers & Appraisers

Morgana has over 15 years of experience in the auction industry. She has served as director of the fine art department, head of appraisal services, and now as Senior Vice President and Director of Trusts & Estates for John Moran Auctioneers & Appraisers. Morgana is a member of the International Society of Appraisers and the Appraisers Association of America. She is a frequent advisor to professionals serving high net worth clients. She regularly meets with families throughout the United States to review their collections to provide valuation services or discuss disposition at auction

Olivian Cha, Collections Curator, Corita Art Center

Olivian Cha is the Curator of Collections at the Corita Art Center. Cha holds an MA in Art History and a Master’s in Library and Information Sciences, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has previously held positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Central Public Library (Los Angeles), and co-founded the independent art space POTTS LA (2016-2020) and the Works Sited series at LAPL (2009-2014). During her tenure at CAC, she has made strong efforts to advance scholarly engagement with the organization’s art and archival collections through exhibitions, publications, and digitization initiatives. She is currently working on “Corita Kent: Complete Serigraphs” – a forthcoming publication to be released in Fall 2024 with Atelier Editions.

Debra Burchett-Lere, AAA, Executive Director, Sam Francis Foundation

Debra Burchett-Lere is an author, curator, and executive director and since the mid-1970s has held key curatorial, editorial, and director positions at the fine-art limited editions print studio Gemini G.E.L. (Graphics Editions Limited, Los Angeles) and the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA). Debra has collaborated on museum shows such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; the Milwaukee Art Museum; Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte, NC; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; the Jeu de Paume, Paris; Kunsthalle- der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in April 2023. Since 2004 Debra has been the executive director of the artist-endowed Sam Francis Foundation working with the legacy of the American abstract expressionist painter (1923–1994). She has collaborated with modern and contemporary international artists including Alice Aycock, David Hockney, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Mario Merz, Mary Miss, Dennis Oppenheim, Mimmo Paladino, Giuseppe Penone, Jody Pinto, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, Robert Therrien, Andy Warhol, and many others. Books and catalogues authored include publications with the Getty Museum, Conservation Institute, Los Angeles (2019); the University of California, Berkeley (UC Press 2011); and Sotheby’s New York. Debra is a long-time fine art appraiser with the Appraisers Association of America, NYC, focusing on modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on limited edition prints, sculpture and on-site installations. Her recent volunteer board services include positions for ArtTable, NYC and the Brand Associates of the Brand Library and Arts Center, Glendale, CA.

Frances Zeman, M.A., FASA, President, Appraisal Resource Associates

A member of ASA since 1980, Fran has earned an M.A. in Art History and holds multiple personal property accreditations in Fine Art, Antiques/Decorative Arts, and Oriental Rugs. She has been Chairperson of the International Personal Property Committee, Chancellor of the College of Fellows, Personal Property Vice-Chair for the ASA Board of Examiners, is an instructor of Principles of Valuation courses and specializes in complex assignments. Fran has published articles and presented on various appraisal topics. With offices in San Francisco and New York, Fran is an active member of the ASA NorCal Chapter and serves as its current Personal Property Chair and Chapter President.

Stephanie Boris, Principal, Art Collection + Estate Services

Stephanie Boris is a cataloguer/archivist and member of the Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists. Her Art Collection + Estate Services provides support for personal property appraisers in the areas of inventory, inspection and research; she also works independently with artists, artists’ estates and private collections. She studied art and film
history at Antioch College in Ohio, as well as academic indexing and connoisseurship of fine and decorative arts at the University of California Extensions in Berkeley and Irvine. Her background
includes positions as project coordinator for the Mills College Art Museum’s Collections Digitizing Project, lead document indexer for the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
Library, and assistant cataloguer at the Anne Bremer Memorial Library, San Francisco Art
Institute.

Analee McClellan, ASA, Sole Manager, Acanthus Appraisals & Consultation Services LLC

A professionally trained appraiser and an Accredited Senior Appraiser with the ASA and an Accredited Member with the ISA, Ms. McClellan has over 20 years of experience as a professional appraiser specializing in complex assignments. Project management of large assignments is a specialty, as Analee works with specialist appraisers and experts in other areas in order to provide customized appraisal services for assignments with multiple, specialized property types. In addition to keeping up with required connoisseurship, valuation theory, methodology, laws and regulations, Ms. McClellan has completed ASA coursework in preparation for an Appraisal Review and Management – Personal Property (ARM) designation. Ms. McClellan is a consultant and expert in the standard of care and typical practice for appraisers, including compliance with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) and IRS requirements. Her broad client and appraisal experience includes assignments for insurance coverage and claims of loss (including being designated as an expert witness and testifying in court), estate and trust valuation matters, charitable contributions, dissolution of marriage, and other wealth management assignments.

Andrea Roth, ASA, CEO, Roth Fine Art Appraisals

Andrea Roth specializes in European and American paintings, sculpture and photography. She has been in the art field for close to 30 years as an academic, gallery administrator and art appraiser. She is an Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA), with the American Society of Appraisers. Andrea has a Ph.D. in Art History and taught Art History at UC Davis, UC Riverside and Santa Clara University. She worked at the J. Paul Getty Trust Art History Information Program and was Assistance Editor of the ArtArt Bulletin. Andrea was a Fulbright Scholas in Italy as a graduate student, conducting her dissertation research in Northern Italian Renaissance Art. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of St. Mary’s College Museum of Art and lectures on art collecting and valuation for insurance professionals, estate planners, attorneys and collectors. She is also serving her third year on the ASA NorCal Chapter Board.

Patty Ross, CEO, Golden State Marketing

Patty Roth has well over 20 years’ experience in marketing and has been in the online space since 1998 where she developed an e-commerce program for a gourmet gift company into a million-dollar business. She has spent 19 years helping the wine industry gain traction online and has since branched out to help other industries grow their brands including financial, legal, health and beauty, motorsports, landscape design, cbd/cannabis, restaurants, transportation and logistics, political activism, non-profits and more. Golden State Marketing and her other business, California Wine Marketing, were founded in 2006. Patty enjoys speaking on various marketing topics to help business owners understand the importance of marketing their brand online and offline.

Patrick H. Ela, ASA, Principal, Comprehensive Art Services, LLC

Patrick  H. Ela is an Accredited Senior Appraiser of the American Society of Appraisers, tested and accredited in Fine Arts. He provides appraisal services for individual, corporate and institutional clients including Fair Market Value, Market Value, and Replacement Value appraisals for estate taxes, non-cash charitable contributions, and insurance coverage purposes among other intended uses. Ela is admitted to the Superior Court of Los Angeles as an expert witness. Selected clients include Ricardo Favela and The Royal Chicano Air Force, The Latino Museum of Los Angeles, The Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation, the Los Angeles Unified School District, AltaMed Health Services, Self Help Graphics & Art, the Estates of Richard Pryor, Ray Bradbury, Lee Chesney, and many private individuals.  Within the American Society of Appraisers, Ela served as Chair, Past Chair, Vice Chair, and Treasurer of the Personal Property Committee (PPC). The PPC governs approximately more than 500 appraisers in Fine Arts, Decorative Arts and Antiques, Residential Contents, Automotive, and a variety of other specialties. .  In other ASA activities, he served as moderator of a panel on Chicano Art at the International Conference of the American Society of Appraisers held in Los Angeles and has written articles on Chicano Art for the PP Magazine. He was appointed to serve as PPC representative on ASA’s legislative committee and was actively involved in securing ASA’s endorsement of the Artist Museum Partnership Act still pending before the US Congress. He has presented programs for Personal Property-specific as well as international conferences.  From 2018-19 Ela served on ASA’s International Elections Committee; from 2019-2021 he served as Chairman of ASA’s International Marketing Committee; in the spring of 2022, he was elected by the personal property members of ASA to serve a four-year term as a Personal Property member of the ASA’s Board of Governors.

Dr. Susana Smith Bautista, Associate Vice President and Chief Curator, AltaMed Art Collection, AltaMed

Dr. Susana Smith Bautista is an experienced arts administrator, independent consultant, art historian, and expert on museums, digital technology, and strategic planning. She completed her Ph.D. as a Provost Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, where she also received her Masters degree in Art History/Museum Studies with honors (Phi Kappa Phi). She has a curatorial background in Latinx, Chicanx, and Latin American art. She recently served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Alliance of Museums, where she sat on the newly-created Diversity Committee and conducted numerous peer-review museum site visits for the Museum Assessment Program.

Susana has over 25 years of experience in the art world in Los Angeles, New York, and Greece working with museums, commercial galleries and non-profit arts organizations, curating exhibitions, lecturing, and writing art criticism and articles. She was executive director of the Mexican Cultural Institute of Los Angeles, interim deputy director and director of public engagement at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, editorial director of www.LatinArt.com, associate with the Daniel Saxon Gallery, chief curator-at-large for LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and executive director of the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Born in Pasadena, California, Susana served the city as Arts and Culture Commissioner for 6 years. She is currently the director and chief curator of the AltaMed Art Collection at AltaMed Health Services Corporation, and just published her second book, How to Close a Museum: A Practical Guide. Her first book was Museums in the Digital Age: Changing Meanings of Place, Community, and Culture (2013).

Angel Diaz, Curator, CEMA – California Ethnic Multi-Cultural Archives, University of California

Angel Diaz has always had a strong interest in California history and its peoples. Diaz brings a wealth of experience both in librarianship as well as education. She previously served as the University Archivist at Penn State and as a UCLA Library Special Collections processing archivist. She earned her Master’s in Library and Information Science from UCLA and a Master’s in Education from the University of San Francisco. Diaz is also a founding member of the Los Angeles Archivists Collective, a grassroots organization founded in 2014 to encourage professional development and skill-sharing at the local level. Diaz is also a 2020-21 fellow in the Association of Research Libraries Leadership and Career Development Program. Prior to her experience in libraries, Diaz was a public school teacher in the Bay Area for five years.

Maria Esther Fernandez, Artistic Director of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts and Culture, Riverside Art Museum

María Esther Fernández serves as Artistic Director of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts and Culture at Riverside Art Museum. Fernández comes to the Cheech from the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, Calif., where she worked for 16 years and most recently served as chief curator and deputy director. She received a 2018 California Arts Council grant to research how curatorial practices impact representation and access for the Chicanx community in contemporary art museums. She’s co-curating a retrospective of work by Amalia Mesa-Bains that will premiere at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in spring 2023.

Rafael Barrientos Martinez, Curator, AltaMed Art Collection, AltaMed

Rafael Barrientos Martinez is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also Curator at the AltaMed Art Collection. Prior he was an Andrew Mellon Summer Practicum Fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), as well as an administrative assistant for paintings conservation for Kimball Art Museum and an Executive Assistant to the Director at the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Dr. Denise Sandoval, Professor, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, California State University, Northridge

Denise M. Sandoval, Ph.D is a Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge (2002 to the present). She received her doctorate in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University in 2003, her Masters of Arts in Chicana/o Studies from California State University Northridge in 1995, and her Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley in 1993. She was the guest curator/community researcher for two exhibitions on lowrider culture at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. She was also a guest curator/writer for a virtual exhibition entitled Lowrider: An American Cultural Tradition for the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives. Her work on lowrider culture was featured in two different documentaries on lowriders She co-edited a book with award winning author Luis J. Rodriguez titled Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community for Tia Chucha Press which documents art activism in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. The book was awarded a bronze medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) in June 2013 and also was awarded the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award in December 2013. Her most recent book project is titled White Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies (October 2016), which is a co-edited two volume set published by Praeger, with contributed essays on issues in Ethnic Studies in both K-12 and higher education. The books were recognized as being one of the “Best Reference Titles of 2016” in the category of Social Science by the Library Journal. Currently, she is the guest curator for the exhibition The High Art of Riding Low: Ranflas, Corazón e Inspiración (July 2017 to May 2018) at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition examines “the diverse and complex viewpoints of more than 50 artists who visualize, celebrate and interrogate the lowrider car through a selection of artwork that includes vehicles, paintings, sculptures, and art installations”.

She has been a professor in Chicana/o Studies/Ethnic Studies for over 18 years and teaches courses such as Introduction to Chicano Culture, History of the Americas, History of the Chicana/o and Third World Woman and La Chicana. Her research interests include popular culture and the arts, cultural histories of Los Angeles, oral history and community histories.

Rick L. Schwartz, Esq., CPA, Partner, Schwartz & Schwartz, APC

Rick L. Schwartz, an attorney and CPA since 1977-1978, started his firm 1982. Prior to that time, Rick worked at various law and accounting firms, including the international accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. Rick has lived in the San Fernando Valley since 1959. Rick graduated from the California Western School of Law in 1977 after attending the University of California, Los Angeles Law School as a non-matriculating law student. Early in his career, Rick taught individual, partnership, corporation, and estate/gift tax courses at California State University at Los Angeles and for the Miller Comprehensive CPA Review as well as speaking before numerous groups, including the chambers of commerce, nonprofit associations, real estate brokers, and other professional groups. A large portion of Rick’s practice is serving as a professional trustee as well as an attorney/CPA for wealthy multi-generational families.   

A former long-distance runner, contract bridge life master, and semi-pro poker player, Rick now practices at his firm with his business-partner son as well as spending time with his grandkids.

John D. Russell, JD, Strategic Partnership Officer, ASA

John D. Russell, JD, Strategic Partnership Officer, oversees ASAʼs government relations and business development activities. He serves as staff liaison to ASAʼs Real Property-NAIFA Committee, is ASAʼs representative to the Appraisal Foundation Advisory Committee, and is a past member of the Board of Trustees of the Appraisal Foundation. He has a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Syracuse University College of Law and a Bachelors degree in Broadcasting and Mass Communications from State University of New York at Oswego.

Leslie Wright, Chairman, North America, Bonhams

Leslie Wright is the Chairman of Bonhams, North America. She leads Bonhams’ strategic growth initiatives and manages business operations across North America. Under Leslie’s leadership, Bonhams’ US business, with locations in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, has grown immensely. With her careful management and response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bonhams not only survived the economic challenges of the past two years but has expanded by acquiring local auction houses and broadening the company’s digital footprint.
 
In over 25 years at Bonhams, Leslie has been instrumental in bringing many important estates to the auction market and has orchestrated complex estate appraisals for leading figures in the entertainment, business, and philanthropic world.

Leslie regularly liaises with attorneys, trust officers, wealth managers and other members of the trusts and estates community. She is a valued advisor and sought-after lecturer in the realm of trusts and estates. Leslie has addressed many estate planning councils and leading organizations such as the Hawaiian Tax Institute, the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, the American Bar Association, and the California State Bar. She has been published in the Estate Analyst, a scholarly journal of the estate planning community.

Event sponsors include: John Moran Auctioneers & Appraisers, the Sullivan Goss Gallery and John V. Henley, ASA, LLC.

Early registration discounts available through February 28, 2023.

Register online at bit.ly/PPAS23 or by calling (800) 272-8258.