1960–

Leslie Ann (Les) Christensen, a Nebraska native, lived in Arkansas for nearly three decades before moving to Pennsylvania in 2020.

She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Iowa and spent a year of graduate school at both Memphis State University in Memphis, Tenn., and the Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht in the Netherlands before completing her master’s degree at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro in 1993.

Christensen is known for her mixed media works that use everyday objects to offer a vision of universal experience and common responsibility. Her artwork has been included in solo and group shows and can be found in collections throughout the United States and in Europe.

She was attending school in the Netherlands in 1991 when she learned of the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the call for entries for A Personal Statement. Curator Charlott Jones of Jonesboro selected Christensen as one of 20 artists to exhibit work at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock in 1991, and Juror Grace Glueck of The New York Times selected her as one of 10 artists to exhibit at NMWA in Washington, D.C., in 1992.

In 2001, Christensen was named director of the new Bradbury Gallery at ASU. She initiated the rebranding from gallery to museum in 2015 along with the renaming to Bradbury Art Museum (BAM), which better reflected the organization’s mission of teaching, presenting and collecting. BAM is known internationally for hosting the annual Delta National Small Prints Exhibition, a juried print show of work by artists from around the world.

The museum hosted two of the Arkansas Committee’s Women to Watch state tours while Christensen served as director.

“We had a tremendous audience response to these exhibitions,” she said. “I appreciate and applaud the Arkansas Committee’s consistent efforts to highlight and support women artists and provide opportunities for them to have their work seen statewide.”

Additionally, during Christensen’s tenure at BAM, the museum was twice offered the opportunity to work with students who had been awarded an internship through the Arkansas Committee.

“We are so fortunate in our state to have a forward-thinking organization like the Arkansas Committee,” she said. “It was such a delight to work with these young women who were selected to receive internships. The student interns worked diligently on specific projects, providing assistance to the museum, all the while gaining knowledge about the inner workings of an art facility. It was a win-win for us all.”

In addition to showing her work in A Personal Statement in 1992, a sculpture by Christensen was included in a From the States exhibition at NMWA in 2005.

Her involvement with the Arkansas Committee continued in 2010 when she served as curator for the Committee’s Women to Watch exhibit. She selected seven Arkansas artists for consideration by a NMWA curator, and Nikki Hemphill was ultimately honored as one of eight artists who exhibited at the museum in Washington.

In 2015, Christensen served as one of two jurors for the Arkansas Committee’s first Juried Artist Registry.

“Since its inception, the Arkansas Committee has clearly achieved its ambitious intent of providing exposure, support and opportunity for Arkansas women artists,” said Christensen.

“From the initial D.C. exhibition in 1992, which offered a group of artists the opportunity to present their work in a national venue, some for the first time, to the many ongoing opportunities currently available, the Arkansas Committee has helped foster generational impact for the arts in Arkansas, and for women artists in particular,” she said.

In describing her artwork, Christensen said, “This body of work examines and embraces the human condition. It is a physical manifestation of my attempt to make sense of our place in the world.  It considers the joys and consequences of interpersonal relationships, contemplates the inevitable and, hopefully, is a reminder of the beauty, wonder and fragility of life.”

Christensen now lives near Philadelphia, Pa., and works out of her studio there.