The Phantom of the Art Museum

Why couldn’t our college professors have been as boss as Jillian McDonald, namesake of ASU Art Museum’s latest too-cool-for-school residency, “Social Studies Project 5 — Jillian McDonald: Alone Together in the Dark”? Our dubious profs always wore twee elbow patches and looked like they’d just fallen off the couch after snoozing through a Star Trek: The Original Series marathon. McDonald, an associate professor of fine art at New York’s Pace University and co-curator of the college’s Pace Digital Gallery, digs horror flicks, the company of strangers, and making herself up as a loathsome phantasm for her infamous series of artworks known as “Zombie Portraits.”

During her residency, which continues through November 14 at the Tempe museum, 51 East 10th Street, the offbeat Canada native (aren’t they all?) will open her semi-creepy creative process to all comers. She will, she says, focus on “haunted sites, ghosts and abandoned houses . . . sustainable living, ghost towns, and the Day of the Dead.” An exhibit of the resultant works will follow.

Mon., Oct. 5; Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: Oct. 5. Continues through Nov. 14, 2009