Lareese Hall

Lareese Hall brings a mix of professional expertise and personal interests to her role as dean of Library at CalArts, including extensive experience in academic library leadership; a strong commitment to the role libraries play in fostering our critical, creative, and cultural understanding and growth as individuals and communities; and a deep background in the arts.  

Prior to joining CalArts in 2024, Lareese served as the director of Libraries at Colby College and before that as the dean of Libraries at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In addition to leading the Fleet Library at RISD, she oversaw key resource teams on campus in the Nature Lab, Campus Exhibitions, and the Center for Arts and Language. previously, she worked as an art and architecture librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, as a fine arts librarian at Denison University, and received additional academic library training at the University of Pittsburgh Libraries, the Carnegie Mellon University arts library, and the University of New Mexico Libraries.

Prior to her career as a librarian, Lareese spent more than a decade in the nonprofit sector addressing issues related to informal education, adult literacy, community development, science education, landscape and urban design, and public art. She is a visual artist and fiction writer, and holds a BA from Oberlin College, an MFA in Writing from Goddard College, and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from the University of Pittsburgh. Her current research focuses on creative practice in libraries, library space design, bookmaking, and small press archives and publishing.