January 13, 2025

Dear Campus Community,

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of Douglas McCulloh, Interim Executive Director and Senior Curator of Exhibitions at UCR ARTS. Doug died on Sunday, January 5, after a brief illness at his home per his wishes, surrounded by loved ones, including his longtime spouse, Dawn Hassett.

An artist by nature and a curator-photographer by trade, Doug was a self-described “troublemaker” who joined UCR ARTS as a full-time staff member in July 2018. In February 2023, he stepped in admirably as the Interim Executive Director, providing steady and calm leadership as UCR ARTS mounted several significant exhibitions, including Digital Capture: Southern California and the Pixel-Based Image World, The Impact of Images: Mamie Till’s Courage from Tragedy, and a marquee retrospective on the California Museum of Photography’s first 50 years of collecting, archiving, and curatorship.

Doug’s partnership with UCR ARTS started well before 2018, including the 2009 curated exhibition Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists. It was described as “the first major museum exhibition on a subject rich with paradox, provocation, and revelation.” The show has continued to travel extensively.

Doug was a featured artist and author whose many images and publications highlighted photographic practices in and about the Golden State. Doug also collaborated with Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing Susan Straight, most notably on the 2013 Riverside Art Museum’s More Dreamers of the Golden Dream (described as “a love letter to generations of Riverside’s Eastside community”) and Wild Blue Yonder, a 2014 exhibition recording the many hidden stories of Southern California veterans in the IE.

Born in 1959 in Los Angeles, Doug was best known as an artist for his system-driven projects that combined Surrealist-inspired chance operations with high-volume photography. He was an honors undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara and held an MFA in photography from Claremont Graduate University. He was a five-time recipient of funding support from the California Council for the Humanities, and his work has been shown internationally in hundreds of exhibitions, from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, to the Smithsonian Institution.

In a 1998 Los Angeles Times article about “Chance Encounters: The L.A. Project,” Doug was described as possessing “a wondrous weirdness. He’s never unsympathetic… Empathy is also tied to his working habits…when McCulloh shoots, he chats with most everyone willing.”

Many of us will remember Doug as a warm, sympathetic, smart, and humble man who was always willing to chat and exuded that wonderfully wondrous weirdness. I recall fondly many of our conversations over the years at UCR ARTS, including the opening reception for our current acclaimed PST show, Digital Capture.

I am working closely with CHASS Dean Daryle Williams to create a leadership transition plan at UCR ARTS. Academic activities and public programming at our premier photography museum and arts center continue uninterrupted. For today, we extend our deepest sympathies to Dawn and Doug’s wider circle of family and friends, as well as colleagues here at UCR and across the globe.

Sincerely,

Liz

Elizabeth Watkins, PhD (she / her / hers)
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Professor of History
University of California, Riverside