JAMESTOWN – Patricia A. Briggs has been named director of galleries and curator of collections and exhibitions at Jamestown Community College.

Dr. Briggs will provide leadership for exhibitions, programming and art collections on both the Jamestown and Cattaraugus County campuses.

An art historian and visual arts critic, Dr. Briggs served as director and curator of the art galleries at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside from June 2011 to July 2013. Her writing appears in Artforum International, History of Photography, Women’s Art Journal, Art on Paper and other print and online journals.

She writes the blog, “Scene Unseen: Viewing Notes,” with informal notes about studio and exhibition visits. An independent critic interested in the role of the viewer in the art community, Dr. Briggs uses the blog to model engaged viewing and to support her art community.

Dr. Briggs curated exhibitions and community projects at UW-Parkside, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wisc., Plains Art Museum in North Dakota, and the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, Minn.

She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Ohio State University and a doctorate in art history at the University of Minneapolis.