Cat Peña

Public Art Manager 

Cat Peña has served as an Art Consultant for the City of Germantown since 2016. In September of 2020, she became the City’s first Public Art Manager.  Peña is a practicing artist and cultural producer with extensive experience in program development, project management and community engagement in the private and public sectors.

Since 2004, Peña has cultivated an interest and understanding of the multifaceted field of public art by assuming the roles of artist, fabricator, installer, project manager, educator, fundraiser, grant writer and community organizer. It is from this knowledge that Peña successfully identifies, designs and implements opportunities to improve cultural exchanges that reanimate or define the physical, social or cultural spaces while advocating for artists and their artistic practices.

Peña’s artwork seeks to incite social change in hopes of bringing self-awareness to the viewer and to our surrounding social structures. The essence of her work is situated in installations, collaborations and performances that intersect art, the everyday and public space. Peña’s artwork has been exhibited in Seattle, New York, Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Boulder, Las Vegas, Kansas City and Milwaukee.

Peña has received public art commissions from the Downtown Memphis Commission, the Memphis Medical District Collaborative, UrbanArt Commission, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens and the Tennessee Department of Transportation. In 2014, Peña founded a public art creative platform called Collabortory that expands public art practices through collaborative and social practices.