Ann Getty Endowed Visiting Artist-Scholar
USF is thrilled to welcome three visiting artists in residence as the 2026-27 Ann Getty Endowed Chairs. These artists will join the Ann Getty Institute of Art and Design (AGI), founded through the generosity of Gordon Getty, USF alumnus, composer, and philanthropist, to honor his late wife, Ann Getty. The AGI funds student scholarships, arts programming, and endowed chairs at USF. Bringing together the power of the arts and a Jesuit, liberal arts education, the institute expands and links USF's arts programs, spaces, and scholarships. Its goal is to nurture a community of artists across disciplines to create projects that support communities, transform lives, and inspire action for the common good. The 2026-27 Ann Getty Endowed Chairs will interact with students, faculty, and staff through guest lectures and workshops. At the conclusion of each artist's residency, the wider community will be invited to a culminating event showcasing their artistic work.
2026/2027 Visiting Scholars
Two Tigers Productions
Known collectively as Two Tigers Production, Leah Thompson and Jillian Schultz first met in Beijing in 2011 while collaborating on COAL + ICE, a landmark photography exhibition on the climate crisis that toured globally. Their interdisciplinary practice is rooted in rigorous academic training and forged through collaborations spanning grassroots artist-led initiatives to major institutions. Their work–from multimedia exhibitions and documentary film to arts education and community engagement–cultivates and amplifies creative responses to urgent societal challenges.
During their residency at USF, Thompson and Schultz will advance post-production on You Should Never Blink, their feature documentary on the rebellious life and legacy of educator, humanitarian, and "pop art nun" (Sister) Corita Kent. The film received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the 2025 Better Angels Society Lavine Fellowship.
Leah Thompson
Leah Thompson (she/her) is a documentary filmmaker and producer whose work explores how creative communities—past and present—foster and advocate for social and environmental change. Her documentary How to Start Your Own Utopia has been exhibited at the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, and SFMOMA. She holds degrees in history from UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University.
Jillian Schultz
Jillian Schultz (she/they) is a producer and cultural organizer working at the intersection of art and activism, with expertise in lens-based media, exhibition curation, and creative facilitation. Her career began at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and her documentary work has been featured in The New York Times and on PBS. She speaks Mandarin and holds a BA from Tulane University and an MA from Columbia University.
Vanessa Hua
Vanessa Hua is the author of Coyoteland, the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, the story collection Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors' Pick, as well as the forthcoming Uprooted. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, among other honors. Previously an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, she teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. While in residency at USF, she will work on Painterland, a novel inspired by Bernice Bing—a queer Chinese American painter at the heart of San Francisco's Beat scene—drawing on Bay Area archives and community memory to recover lost stories.
Keg de Souza
Keg de Souza is an interdisciplinary artist of Goan ancestry who lives on unceded Gadigal land in Sydney. Through temporary architecture, publishing, and radical pedagogy, de Souza’s practice centers voices that are often marginalized to learn about place and investigates lesser-known stories of plant migration to reveal histories of empire and ecological change. Building on their broader botanical research, de Souza’s project traces the trans-Pacific journey of the eucalyptus from Australia to California and how it has become a defining feature of the Californian landscape, now deeply entangled in contemporary debates surrounding fire risk, water scarcity, and climate resilience.
De Souza holds degrees in architecture (UWA) and fine arts (UNSW) and a PhD, (Monash University, Wominjeka Djeembana) and has exhibited widely including at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, India; Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; South London Gallery; Artspace, Sydney; Setouchi Triennale, Japan; Biennale of Sydney; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Delfina Foundation, London; Auckland Triennial and Jakarta Biennale (with ruangrupa).
2025/2026 Visiting Scholars
Cheryl Derricotte
Cheryl Derricotte is a visual artist who specializes in glasswork, paper, and textiles. Originally from Washington, D.C., she currently lives and makes art in San Francisco. While in residency at USF, she plans to work on a new project entitled 36 Trees, in which she creates an art piece centered around a tree from each of San Francisco’s 36 neighborhoods. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Glass, the deYoung Museum, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Public Library, the Public Art Collection of the City of Berkeley, and the National Association of Homebuilders, among others. Derricotte holds a B.A. in urban affairs (minor in history) from Barnard College at Columbia University, a master's of regional planning from Cornell University, and a master of fine arts from the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Priyanka D’Souza
Priyanka D’Souza(she/her) is a visual artist, writer, and researcher who explores rest, queerness, and disability as methodologies for institutional and infrastructural critique. While in residency at USF, she plans to work on a new project entitled SpinelessSpeak, in which she explores the limits of machine-created arts and critically considers what it means to speak. D'Souza holds an MFA in art practice from UC Berkeley (2025) and an MA in arts and aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India (2021). She is the recipient of the Delfina Foundation Artist Residency in London (2021), the FICA Emerging Artist Award (2022), the Zoeglossia Poet Fellowship (2022), and the Murphy Cadogan Award (2024). Her work is part of private and institutional collections, including the Bancroft Library and Archive.
Eric Garcia (aka Churro Nomi)
Eric Garcia (aka Churro Nomi) is a founding member and co-director of Detour Productions. He is a USF grad with a degree in dance from the Department of Performing Arts and Social Justice (PASJ). His artistic work blends immersive theater, dance, filmmaking, community organizing, and drag. While in residency at USF, he plans to develop and perform a collaborative piece for PASJ’s 25th anniversary celebration in spring 2025. The performance, co-created with USF students, will be rooted in disability justice, queer futurism, and community sanctuary. Garcia serves as managing director for Fresh Meat Productions, Sean Dorsey Dance, and the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival.
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