2011 CURATORS

ARTS INSTITUTION CURATORS

Danielle Burns Curator The Houston Museum of African American Culture Danielle Burns is curator of special exhibitions at both the African American Library at the Gregory School and the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) in Houston, TX. She is an adjunct professor of art history and art appreciation at Lone Star College-North Harris Campus. She received her B.A. in history and political science from Prairie View A & M University, and her M.A. in art history from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College. Burns began in 2001 as Development Coordinator at the University Museum at Texas Southern University, where she later worked as exhibition coordinator and assistant curator. She has also worked at the Allen Sheppard Gallery in NYC and the Saint Louis Art Museum where she was the distinguished Saint Louis Art Museums Romare Bearden Fellow 2008-2009, with predecessors like Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw and Dr. Cherise Smith. Other fellowships include the Mickey Leland International Enhancement Fellow where she studied contemporary East African art at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. With Michelle White of the Menil Collection, Burns organized The Whole World Was Watching: Civil Rights Era Photographs from Edmund Carpenter and Adelaide de Menil.

Laurie Ann Farrell Curator/Executive Director of Exhibitions Savannah College of Art and Design Laurie Ann Farrell is an art historian, curator and executive director of exhibitions for the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). In this role she directs the exhibition program for all SCAD galleries in Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia; Lacoste, France; Hong Kong; and at the SCAD Museum of Art. Recent SCAD exhibitions and projects of note include Marina Abramović (2011), Wild Is the Wind (2010), Doug Aitken (2009), Nick Cave (2009), Cao Fei + Map Office NO LAB on Tour (2008-11), Kader Attia: Signs of Reappropriation (2008-09), Yinka Shonibare, MBE, Odile and Odette (2008), Carrie Mae Weems Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment (2008), Wangechi Mutu The Cinderella Curse (2007), Yeondoo Jung: I’ll Remember You (2007), and Nicholas Hlobo: Idioms (2007).

Dr. Tracy Fitzpatrick Curator The Neuberger Museum of Art Click the photo at right to see the curator's online show. Dr. Tracy Fitzpatrick is a curator at the Neuberger Museum of Art and an associate professor in art history in the undergraduate program and the Masters Degree Program in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory at Purchase College, SUNY. Combining curatorial work with curricular initiatives, Fitzpatrick organizes exhibitions and teaches in the areas of modern art and museum studies. Exhibitions curated by Fitzpatrick include American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s (2010), Hannah Wilke: Gestures (2008), Facing Abstraction: Refiguring the Body in the Twentieth Century (2006), Underground Art: A Centennial Celebration of the New York City Subway (2005), Another Dimension: Sculptors as Printmakers (1999), and Artful Advocacy: Cartoons from the Woman Suffrage Movement (1995). Her book, Art and the Subway: New York Underground (Rutgers University Press) was released in May 2009. Fitzpatrick is the recipient of fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies. She is a member of the American Association of Museums and associated CURCOM, ARTTable, the Association of Art Museum Curators, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, and the College Art Association.

David Harper Curator BAMart Click the photo at right to see the curator's online show. David Harper has been the Curator of the BAMart program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music since 2006 where he oversees both exhibitions and a development unit devoted to fundraising through visual art. He studied fine art and art history at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston (BFA, 2004) and Pratt Institute (MS, 2006). He has worked in various capacities at New York galleries, non-profits, and arts institutions prior to joining BAM and additionally works as a freelance advisor, curator, and writer as well as on the board of trustees of NurtureArt, a Brooklyn-based organization serving emerging artists and curators. Recent projects include a series of exhibitions at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York including The Seen and The Hidden: (Dis)covering the Veil (2009), Nineteeneightyfour (2010), and Fünf Räume (2011) and serving as the first curatorial fellow for the noted arts blog, Art Fag City.

Eric C. Shiner Director The Andy Warhol Museum Click the photo at right to see the curator's online show. Eric C. Shiner is director of The Andy Warhol Museum. He joined the museum in 2008 as the Milton Fine Curator of Art, and he has served as director since January 2011. A curator, professor, writer, and translator, Shiner was an adjunct professor at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and in 2007 he curated Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York at Japan Society in New York City. He also served as assistant curator of the Yokohama Triennale 2001. After joining The Warhol, Shiner organized the large-scale exhibition, The End: Analyzing Art in Troubled Times. A proud native of New Castle, PA., Shiner received his Bachelor of Philosophy in the History of Art & Architecture and Japanese Language & Literature at the University of Pittsburgh’s Honors College. He went on to receive the Japanese Government’s Ministry of Education Monbusho Prize and attended graduate school at Osaka University, where he earned an MA in the History of Art. It was in his last semester at Osaka that Shiner interned in the curatorial department of The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, where he worked closely with Shinji Kohmoto, the museum’s chief curator, who would become his mentor. This led to Shiner becoming assistant curator of the Yokohama Triennale 2001. In addition to his museum work, Shiner is an active writer, lecturer, and translator; a contributing editor for Art AsiaPacific magazine; and an adjunct professor of art history at the University of Pittsburgh.

Kevin Stayton Chief Curator The Brooklyn Museum Click the photo at right to see the curator's online show. Since Kevin Stayton joined the Brooklyn Museum in 1980, he has held a number of positions, including Chair of the Department of Decorative Arts and has organized a number of major exhibitions. Appointed Chief Curator in 2001, he supervises all curatorial activities and programming. Considered one of the leading scholars in the field of Decorative Arts, Stayton is a graduate of Ohio State University and was awarded an M.A. in Art History and an M. Phil. from Yale University, where he was a research and exhibitions assistant at the Yale University Art Gallery. Currently Mr. Stayton is an adjunct professor at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts. He has also been a member of the faculty committee of Sotheby’s Works of Art program and has taught at Columbia University and in the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons Master’s Program. He has contributed catalogue essays, authored scholarly articles, and is the author of Dutch by Design: Tradition and Change in Two Historic Brooklyn Houses.

Lowery Stokes Sims Curator The Museum of Arts and Design Click the curator's photo to see her online show. Lowery Stokes Sims is Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design. From 2000-2007 Sims was executive director then president of The Studio Museum in Harlem and most recently served as Adjunct Curator for the Permanent Collection. Sims was on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972-1999. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, Sims is known for her particular expertise in the work of African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists. She has published extensively and her research on the work of the Afro-Cuban Chinese Surrealist artist Wifredo Lam was published by the University of Texas Press in 2002. In 1997 she organized a survey of the work of Richard Pousette-Dart at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sims has lectured nationally and internationally and guest curated numerous exhibitions, most recently at the National Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica (2004), The Cleveland Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society (2006). She is the editor and an essayist for the catalogue of the National Museum of the American Indian’s 2008 retrospective of Fritz Scholder. In 2003-04 Sims served on the jury for the memorial for the World Trade Center, and between 2004 and 2006 served as the chair of the Cultural Institutions Group, a coalition of museums, zoos, botanical gardens and performing organizations funded by the City of New York. Sims was a fellow at the Clark Art Institute in spring 2007. In 2005 and 2006 she was Visiting Professor at Queens College and Hunter College in New York City and in fall 2007 Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
ARTS COUNCIL & FOUNDATION LEADERS
Melanie Franklin Cohn Executive Director Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island Melanie Franklin Cohn is Executive Director of the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island, and serves on the board of the Staten Island Not-for-Profit Association. She spent seven years at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, beginning in 1996. She has edited major publications for the New Museum of Contemporary Art; the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College; and Creative Time. She has served on the Advisory Committee for the Urban Art Program for the NYC Department of Transportation and as a juror for the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative design competition for Freshkills Park. She has led COAHSI in receiving a 2009 Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund Grant and a 2010 NEA Grant. Exhibitions she has curated include “What Passes Between” at M-Lab at Stephen Stoyanov Gallery (2010); “New York, New York, New York” at Flux Factory (2007); "Counter Culture" (2004) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art; "Club 57: Where Are You?" (2005), showing Harvey Wang's photos of the East Village from 1973-1982; and the zine and internet portions of the New Museum exhibition "alt.youth.media" (1996). Ms. Cohn received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1992 and her BFA from Missouri State University in 1989.

Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer Executive Director Queens Council on the Arts Click the photo at right to see the curator's online show. Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer is the Executive Director of the Queens Council on the Arts (QCA) and oversees all programmatic and fundraising activities. She is the recipient of several awards from the Municipal Art Society, the Mayor’s Award for Culture & the Arts. Her honors include Cultural Leader of the Year of the Top Ten Women in Business in Queens and One of the Top 20 Movers and Shakers in Queens. Hoong Yee has served on review panels for the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art program, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Jane Jacobs Medal jury. Hoong Yee serves on the boards of the Forest Park Trust, The Writers Room and Tony Bennett’s Exploring the Arts Foundation. She has recently been appointed to the New York City Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission.

Michael L. Royce Executive Director New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Michael Royce is the Executive Director of the New York Foundation for the Arts. NYFA is the largest nonprofit provider of funding, information and services to artists and emerging arts centered organizations in the U.S. Each year, NYFA raises approximately $10 million dollars to provide awards, workshops and resources to thousands of artists and arts organizations throughout the nation. Mr. Royce was named head of NYFA in 2006. In this capacity and working with institutions such as the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the New Jersey State Arts Council, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others, Mr. Royce has served on panels awarding public dollars to excellent performing cultural not for profits and has conducted many workshops and seminars on networking, fundraising, managing and Board development. As a Trustee, Mr. Royce currently serves on the New York Council of Nonprofits and in the past has served on the Boards of the Jersey City Museum, the Art Directors Club of New York, the Rebecca Kelley Ballet, and the 34th Street Partnership. Internationally, Mr. Royce has been an invited speaker by the Costa Rica-North American Cultural Center, the State of Israel through the New York Israel Cultural Cooperation Commission, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Arts Council England the Bureau for External Cultural Relations, Ministry of Culture, and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture in Beirut, Lebanon. Prior to his leadership at NYFA, Mr. Royce was appointed by Governor George E. Pataki as President of the Moynihan Station Redevelopment Corporation, which is a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation, a public authority under the Governor of New York State created for the expressed purpose of launching initiatives relating to economic development within New York State. The Moynihan Station Redevelopment Corporation reported to a Board of Directors representing the President of the United States, the Governor of New York State and the Mayor of New York City. Governor Pataki had previously appointed Mr. Royce as the Deputy Director of the New York State Council on the Arts.

Deirdre Scott Executive Director Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) Deirdre Scott is a dedicated professional with extensive experience in cultural and organizational development, technology and new media. Prior to joining the Bronx Council on the Arts [BCA] as Executive Director, she was consulting Curator, and followed for several years as Director of Technology at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Deirdre has held positions with cultural institutions as diverse as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Cooper-Hewitt – The Smithsonian's National Design Museum. She has also worked as an educator, exhibition and multimedia designer, Virtual Reality [VR] designer, and instructor at the New School University. Exhibitions include Passages, Contemporary Art in Transition, for the Studio Museum in Harlem which was accompanied by a catalog and 2-year national tour. In 1997 Ms. Scott founded DesignPolice, a consulting enterprise focused on cultural technology, organizational development and new media. She co-founded The Art Shuttle, the first movable Arts and promotional vehicle between SoHo and Chelsea. Other posts include Executive Trustee, ArtTrust International; collections management consulting MetLife Corporation; co-founder of Aquamarine Sculpture Park, Manhattan’s first waterfront sculpture park.

Courtney Wendroff Visual Arts Director Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) Click the photo at right to see the curator's online show. Courtney J. Wendroff is the Visual Arts Director for Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). Since joining BAC in 2005 she spearheaded BAC Gallery, an exhibition and public programs series for emerging artists and curators. She has served as a guest juror and curator for several New York exhibitions and manages the Council’s new arts consultancy program. Recent consultancy projects include City Walls, artists’ murals on construction fencing, and Hotel 718, a boutique hotel in downtown Brooklyn that purchased 80 original artworks for the Hotel’s public spaces. Prior to joining BAC, she was the Assistant Director of Jeffrey Coploff Fine Art Ltd. in Chelsea as well as a consultant to Margaret Thatcher Projects. Also an artist, Wendroff has exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe. Prior to running a gallery she spent many years teaching and assisting artists in New York and San Francisco. She devoted her early career to helping start up the not-for-profit Public Glass in San Francisco, where she also taught and had a studio. She is a member of ELNYA and attended the Arts Leadership Institute, at Columbia University. In addition to earning her MFA from Parsons School of Design, and BFA from the California College of the Arts, she has studied at Pilchuck Glass School.

MEDIA ORGANIZATION PHOTO DIRECTORS & EDITORS
James Estrin Senior Staff Photographer & Lens Blog Co-Editor New York Times James Estrin is a Senior Staff Photographer for The New York Times and a co-editor of the Times' photography blog, Lens. He founded Lens in 2009 and continues to edit and write for the blog. He started at the 'Times in 1987 and was part of a Pulitzer Prize winning team in 2001. In addition to photographing, editing and blogging, Mr. Estrin also writes for the 'Times and produces multimedia content for nytimes.com. Internationally, he has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict several times, chronicled the journey of immigrants between Mexico and the U.S., and photographed in Haiti after the earthquake. In 2004 Mr. Estrin was the first journalist to photograph an assisted suicide in Oregon, which he documented through articles, photographs and an audio slide show. He is an adjunct professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Kira Pollack Director of Photography TIME Kira Pollack joined TIME as the director of photography in October 2009. She oversees the photographic vision of TIME, TIME.com and TIME on the iPad. TIME has won numerous awards, including Overseas Press Club, World Press, POYi, SPD and American Photography. Previously, Pollack was the deputy photo editor for the New York Times Magazine. During her 11-year tenure, she helped launch Play, the Times’ sports magazine.
OVERSEAS CURATORS
Machel Bogues Curator; Director Abeng Productions Ltd. Machel Bogues started Abeng Productions ltd in October 2010 and spent the last five years working in two of the world’s leading museums, Victoria and Albert and Natural History Museums. During that time he successfully built and installed a range of websites and exhibitions including Amazonia, a contemporary Art Exhibition in 2010, and Uncomfortable Truths in 2007. He provided curatorial support to the Story of the Supremes from the Mary Wilson Collection. He co-curated the Parliament and the Slave Trade 1600–1807 at the Houses of Parliament, and is currently developing a major exhibition on Haitian Art for the South African National Gallery.

Siona O'Connell Curator Lecturer/Doctoral Candidate Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town Siona O’Connell is a lecturer and PhD candidate at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, (UCT). She studied Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT majoring in photography. Her area of focus is looking at the family album of the oppressed in an attempt to re-imagine notions of justice and freedom. With a passion for the camera, she has curated and participated in several photographic and visual art exhibitions, including Shared Legacies: The Alfred Duggan Cronin and Edward C Curtis Photographs and The Freedom Box Project between the US and South Africa. She was awarded a TRP Fellowship at Brown University and is a BIARI (Brown International Advanced Research Institutes) alumnus.

2011 CURATORS

Gallery Exhibitions