Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) celebrates and illuminates the vitality of one of America’s most diverse cities by connecting audiences and artists with public, educational, and career-advancing film and arts programming.

Jill Magid is an American artist, writer, and filmmaker. Her work interrogates structures of power on an intimate level, exploring the emotional, philosophical, and legal tensions that exist between institutions and individual agency. Solo exhibitions include The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; Dia Bridgehampton; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; San Francisco Art Institute; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Museum of Art, California; Tate Liverpool; and the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands. Her first feature-length film The Proposal (2018), commissioned by Field of Vision and distributed in the U.S. by Oscilloscope Laboratories, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and received numerous prestigious festival awards.  Her work is included the collections of the Centre Pompidou, CNAP, Whitney Museum of American Art, Fundacion Jumex, the Guggenheim Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the United States Mint, among others. Magid is the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2021 VIA Art Fund Grant, 2020 Creative Time Artist Commission, and the 2017 Calder Prize.

In January 2020, Hesse McGraw was appointed the 10th Executive Director of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), one of the oldest non-collecting contemporary art Museums in the United States. Hesse is a curator, writer, cultural leader, and passionate advocate for the essential role of artists in advancing society. He began his career in Kansas City 20 years ago, and most recently served as Partner of the cross-disciplinary architecture practice el dorado inc.; as Vice President for Exhibitions and Public Programs at San Francisco Art Institute; and Chief Curator of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, in Omaha, Nebraska.

Hesse’s curatorial practice and arts organization leadership are acclaimed for shifting organizations into springboards that expand the agency of artists beyond the gallery, reach new audiences, and embrace unexpected contexts. Currently, CAMH and Hesse are engaged in multiple cross-sector projects and public realm design initiatives beyond our walls that position artists as catalysts of cultural transformation by directly engaging issues such as water recycling, health and wellness, social justice, and equity.