Jo Farb Hernández

Jo Farb Hernández is a folklorist, curator, and writer based in Watsonville, California and Catalunya, Spain. Succeeding founder Seymour Rosen as the second Executive Director of Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments (or SPACES Archives), she helped develop a large public archive on the subject of art environments.

Hernández is currently Director Emerita of the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery and Professor Emerita in the Department of Art and Art History at San Jose State University (SJSU). She is a contributing editor for Raw Vision magazine (UK), serves on the International Editorial Board for Elsewhere – the International Journal of Self-Taught and Outsider Art (Australia) and on the Advisory Council for Bric-a-Brac Arte Outsider journal (Italy), and is a member of several national and international boards for nonprofit arts organizations and art environments.

Career Hernández served as Director and Chief Curator of the Triton Museum of Art from 1978 to 1985, and at the Monterey Museum of Art from 1985 to 1993. She also served as President of the California Association of Museums from 1991-1992.

In 2014, she published Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments (2013). Among Hernández's other book-length works are A. G. Rizzoli: Architect of Magnificent Visions (Harry N. Abrams, 1997) and Forms of Tradition in Contemporary Spain (2005). In addition, as part of her curatorial work, Hernandez has authored exhibition catalogue texts on the works of Lorser Feitelson, Shoji Hamada, Jeremy Anderson, August François Gay, and Misch Kohn, among others.

Preservation Jo Farb Hernández at Prophet Isaiah Robertson's Second Coming House in Niagara Falls, NY. Photo by Fred Scruton, 2015. Hernández has been consulted on the preservation of art environment sites including Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain. She has been particularly active in preserving the Spanish art environments of Josep Pujiula, Xicu Cabanyes, Francisco González Gragera, Blas García, and Julio Basanta. thumb Jo Farb Hernández at Josep Pujiula i Vila's site in Argelaguer, Spain, 2013. Photo by Sam Hernández.