Four new faculty members, all internationally recognized artists with works exhibited and collected in major museums in the United States and around the world, are changing the face of the Visual Arts Division at Columbia University's Graduate School of the Arts.

Coco Fusco, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kara Walker and Dana Hoey begin teaching graduates and undergraduates this fall. In addition to her teaching, Fusco becomes the new director of graduate studies as well. "The additions to our already impressive faculty bring a diversity of new strengths in performance, video, installation and color photography," said Jon Kessler, associate professor of the arts and chair of the Visual Arts Division.

A New York-based interdisciplinary artist, Fusco has lectured, performed, exhibited and curated programs throughout the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, Korea, Japan, South Africa and Latin America. She is the author of "English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas" (1995) and the editor of "Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas" (1999). Her latest video installation, "Els Segadors," will premiere in September as part of the Unpacking Europe exhibition for Rotterdam Cultural Capital of Europe 2001.

Fusco's work has been included in the Whitney Biennial, the Sydney Biennale, the Johannesburg Biennial and the London International Theatre Festival, among other venues. Her videos have been broadcast on public television. Fusco's writings have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, Art in America, the Nation, Third Text and Nka: Journal of African Art, as well as a number of anthologies. She has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Council on the Arts, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and Arts International, among other organizations.

Photographer and videographer Hoey has exhibited in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, and London. This past winter she had a solo exhibit at the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, D.C,, and in the fall she will exhibit with the Tache Levy Gallery in Belgium. She is represented by the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York City.

Born in Buenos Aires, Tiravanija, lives and works in Berlin and New York. His works span a range of media and embrace interactivity, inviting the public to eat, cook, and sleep.

His work has been featured in many group exhibitions in New York, Austria, Berlin, Paris and Santa Fe. Tiravanija has also participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Berlin Biennale, the Carnegie International, the Kwangju Bienniale and the Venice Bienniale.

For more than a decade his solo work has appeared in galleries in New York, Santa Fe, Philadelphia, Chicago, France, Italy and Germany, including the Paula Allen Gallery and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, SITE in Santa Fe, the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.

Walker has been the the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Walker's work has appeared in individual and group shows at the Brent Sikkema Gallery, in New York, the Des Moines Art Center, the Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Africant Galleri Index in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Musee des Beaux Arts in Cole, France.