Past Emerging Curators

Jordan Horton

Jordan Horton is a curator and scholar from Newark, New Jersey, whose scholarship largely focuses on the internet as a geographical space, with a special interest in sonic and visual aesthetics, virtual subculture, and the translation of internet-based communication systems into everyday life. Jordan completed a BA in Art History from DePauw University in 2019 and an MA in Art History from Williams College/ Clark Art Institute in 2023. They previously served as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). At WCMA, they assisted with exhibitions such as Sweaty Concepts (2021) and Remixing the Hall (ongoing). They have also worked with living artists for shows such as Frantz Zéphirin: Selected Works (2022), Beatriz Cortez: The Portals (2023), and Mirrored Interiors: Films by Cecilia Aldarondo (2023). Jordan’s curatorial practice is centered around community and accessibility. They recently curated the exhibition Pick Me Up, Put Me On at the Bronx River Art Center. They believe curation is an act of care for art, artists, and all who encounter it. For this reason, they believe additional exhibition programming and various forms of interpretation are critical for viewers to experience art to the fullest.

Mehveş Lelic

Mehves is an Istanbul-born artist, curator and educator based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In her work she ponders modernity and heritage, belonging, and the resulting relationship with the environment. She is an Assistant Professor of Art and Art History and the Director of Mosely Gallery at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. She holds an MFA from Bard College and a BA from the University of Chicago. Lelic’s photographic work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Rotterdam Photo Festival, PhotoNOLA, Filter Photo Chicago, the Ogden Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art Baltimore, Cosmos Arles France, the Photographers’ Gallery Istanbul, and others. Her work has been published in the National Geographic, GEO Magazine, Ain’t Bad, Lenscratch, C41, Aesthetica and Der Greif. She has been awarded the National Geographic Expeditions Council Grant, the City of Chicago Individual Artists’ Award, the Turkish Cultural Foundation Cultural Exchange Fellowship, the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) Conference Fellowship, and the ArtTable Faith Flanagan Fellowship. Lelic previously served as Curator and the Head of the Curatorial Department at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland and has curated and organized over 20 exhibitions, including Spatial Reckoning: Morandi, Picasso, and Villon (2023); Laura Letinsky: No More Than It Should Be (2023); Marty Two Bulls, Jr.: Dominion (2023); In Praise of Shadows: Jun’ichiro Tanizaki and Modern and Contemporary Works (2023); Mary Cassatt: Labor and Leisure (2023); Fickle Mirror: Dialogues in Self-Portraiture (2022); Jackie Milad: Vestige (2022); Norma Morgan: Enchanted World (2022); The Movable Image: Video Art by Collis/Donadio, Shala Miller, and Rachel Schmidt (2022); Hoesy Corona: Terrestrial Caravan (2022); and On Water (2019).

Dr. Fahamu Pecou

Dr. Fahamu Pecou received his BFA at the Atlanta College of Art in 1997 and a Ph.D. from Emory University in 2018. Dr. Pecou exhibits his art worldwide in addition to lectures and speaking engagements at colleges and universities. As an educator, Dr. Pecou has developed (ad)Vantage Point, a narrative-based arts curriculum focused on Black male youth. Dr. Pecou is also the founding Director of the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA). Pecou’s work is featured in noted private and public national and international collections including; Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and Culture, Societe Generale (Paris), Nasher Museum at Duke University, The High Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Seattle Art Museum, Paul R. Jones Collection, ROC Nation, Clark Atlanta University Art Collection and Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia. In 2020, Pecou was one of 6 artists selected for Emory University’s groundbreaking Arts & Social Justice Fellowship. Additionally, Pecou was the Georgia awardee for the 2020 South Arts Prize. In 2017 he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition “Miroirs de l’Homme” in Paris, France. A recipient of the 2016 Joan Mitchell Foundation “Painters and Sculptors” Award, his work also appears in several films and television shows including; HBO’s Between the World and Me, Blackish, and The Chi. Pecou’s work has also been featured on numerous publications including Atlanta Magazine, Hanif Abdurraqib’s poetry collection, A Fortune for Your Disaster and the award-winning collection of short stories by Rion Amilcar Scott, The World Doesn’t Require You.

Gervais Marsh

Gervais Marsh is a writer, curator and scholar from Jamaica whose work is rooted in Black Feminism and deeply invested in Black life, concepts of relationality and care. They are a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University and their research focuses on the generative possibilities that emerge from difficult racial and sexual intimacies in the work of Black queer artists. They are an editor for Ruckus Journal and their writing can be found in publications such as Hyperallergic, C Magazine, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Sugarcane Magazine and ARTS.BLACK, among others. Recent curatorial and archival projects include AJ McClenon: Notes from VEGA (2022) and Robert Paige: Patterns of Progress (ongoing), both at the Hyde Park Art Center. For more information on their practice, please visit gervaismarsh.com 

Arnaldo Rodríguez-Bagué

Arnaldo Rodríguez-Bagué is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and a practice-as-research scholar. He received an MA on Cultural Management (2015) and a BA in Anthropology (2012) both from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Rodríguez-Bagué’s research project focuses on contemporary visual art and performance on colonial insular geographies in the Caribbean and the Pacific islands. His project articulates an archipelagic performance in relation to the queer possibilities produced by the intersections of geography, colonialism, and climate change in the age of the Anthropocene. His research interest center around Performance Theory, Archipelagic American Studies, Caribbean Studies, Pacific Studies, Critical Geography, Transnationalism and Globalization, Decolonial Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Environmental Humanities, Eco-criticism, and New Materialism.

Sofia Gallisa-Muriente

(b. 1986, San Juan, Puerto Rico) Sofía Gallisá Muriente is an artist whose research-based practice resists colonial erasures and claims the freedom of historical agency, proposing mechanisms for remembering and reimagining. Her work deepens the subjectivity of historical narratives and contests dominant visual culture through multiple approaches to documentation. She employs text, image and archive as medium and subject, exploring their poetic and political implications. Sofía has been a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute, Cisneros Institute at MoMA, Annenberg Media Lab at USC and the Flaherty Seminar, and participated in residencies with the Vieques Historical Archive, Alice Yard (Trinidad & Tobago), FAARA (Uruguay) and Fonderie Darling (Montreal), among others. She has exhibited in Documenta, the Whitney Museum, the Queens Museum, Savvy Contemporary, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, and galleries like Km 0.2 and Embajada. From 2014 to 2020, she co-directed the artist-run organization Beta-Local. She is currently a fellow of the Puerto Rican Arts Initiative.

Joshua Gamma

Joshua Gamma is a curator and designer based in Baltimore, Maryland. His practice lives at the crossroads of art, design, music, history, and activism, pulling from his nomadic upbringing as the son of a U.S. Coast Guardsman (growing up primarily in Louisiana and Texas); his experiences as a community radio DJ; the singer in the Austin, Texas, punk band The Mole People; a member of various art and activist collectives; and as a veteran of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Gamma received a BFA in Design and a BA in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in Curatorial Practice from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). As well as being the Emerging Curator in Residence at VisArts in Rockville, MD, Gamma is the Design Director at Current Movements; a D.C.-based nonprofit connecting activists, organizations, and movements around the world using film, art, and technology; and is currently designing a series of artist archive books with Minerva Projects out of Pine Plains, NY.

Kristen Hileman

Baltimore-based independent curator Kristen Hileman spent nearly two decades working as a curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. and more recently as the Head of the Contemporary Department at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her monographic exhibitions brought new attention to important female artists Anne Truitt and Maren Hassinger, and she has realized major commissions with Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, Sarah Oppenheimer, Tomás Saraceno and others. Additionally, Hileman has organized exhibitions of the works of John Baldessari, Cai Guo-Qiang, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Meleko Mokgosi, and John Waters, as well as surveys of contemporary photography and time-based media. She has taught at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and the Corcoran College of Art and Design and is a frequent visiting critic and lecturer at colleges and universities. Upcoming projects include a retrospective exhibition of South African-born, Baltimore-based abstract painter Jo Smail at the Baltimore Museum of Art (March 2020) and the debut solo museum exhibition for figurative painter Theresa Chromati, which also includes a major public art component, at the Delaware Contemporary Museum (June 2020).

Kiara Cristina Ventura

Kiara Cristina Ventura is a Dominican-American journalist and independent curator from the Bronx who aims to be a support for emerging artists especially those from underrepresented communities in the art world. Connecting with artists and creating exhibitions with an extensive amount of programs are crucial parts of Ventura’s practice. Ventura graduated with a B.A. in Art History and Journalism at NYU in May 2018. In the past, she has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cosmopolitan Magazine for Latinas, Art Forum, Grey Art Gallery, Independent Curators International, and the Brooklyn Museum. In July 2018, she began teaching art history classes about modern and contemporary artists of color to combat Euro-centric art history curriculums and make this information accessible to the general public. Ventura won the BAS Bronx Emerging Curators Open Call which resulted in her most recent exhibition, FOR US. Ventura curated FOR US (March 31 – May 12), a reflection of loud unapologetic portraits by 8 young women of color. Artworks speak to the artists’ history, lineage, and pressures of daily lived experience. FOR US was recently reviewed in Art Forum’s Summer 2018 magazine issue. Ventura created ArtsyWindow as an art blog in 2015 and has expanded it as an art platform that curates exhibitions and programs since. Her ultimate goal is to continue creating inclusive spaces for emerging artists whether through articles, content, or physically through carefully curating creative environments. “The 21st Century Emerging Curator Program is a rare opportunity nationally. The year-long mentorship has proven to be invaluable for launching careers and bringing a network of curators into the VisArts’ galleries to present artists and curatorial approaches with global perspectives,” says VisArts Gallery Director and Curator Susan Main. Mentor and mentee receive exhibition budgets to develop exceptional curatorial proposals, commission new work, pay artists, provide curatorial stipends, and create innovative programming and exhibition designs.

Larry Ossei-Mensah

Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic who uses contemporary art and culture as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. He has organized exhibitions and projects with artists at commercial and nonprofit spaces around the globe from, including: Firelei Báez, Ruby Amanze, Hugo McCloud, Brendan Fernandes and Peter Williams. Ossei-Mensah currently serves as the Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at MOCAD in Detroit. He also is a co-founder of the 501c3 ARTNOIR in addition to being a mentor in the New Museum’s incubator program, NEW INC.

Anthony Stepter

Anthony Stepter works at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where he is the assistant director of the graduate program in Museum and Exhibition Studies and served as the coordinator of public programs at Gallery 400 for three years. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MA in Visual and Critical Studies. Anthony has curated exhibitions and projects for ACRE, the Washington Park Arts Incubator at the University of Chicago, and the Open Engagement Conference among other sites. He served as a juror for apexart, collaborated with the Office of Public Culture in Grand Rapids, MI, and co-curated Extinct Entities, a month-long performance series of commissioned art works exploring the history of Chicago-based art spaces that no longer exist. Anthony’s work seeks to encourage museums and galleries to consider their relationship to the communities in which they program and to support projects that invite publics to define and generate meaningful connections to works of art and ideas.

Astria Suparak

Astria Suparak has curated exhibitions, screenings, live music events and performances for art spaces, film festivals, and academic venues internationally, including PS1, The Kitchen, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, Museo Rufino Tamayo, and The Liverpool Biennial, as well as for non-art spaces such as elementary schools, sports bars, and rock clubs. Suparak was the director and curator of the Pratt Institute Film Series and Syracuse University’s Warehouse Gallery. As the director and curator of Carnegie Mellon’s Miller Gallery she curated Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men, the first solo exhibition of the internationally renowned culture-jamming group; Whatever It Takes: Steelers Fan Collections, Rituals, and Obsessions, which explored sports fanaticism as a significant form of cultural production; and Alien She, a traveling exhibition on the lasting impact of the global punk feminist movement Riot Grrrl, among other exhibitions. Her curated videotape, Some Kind of Loving, produced by Joanie 4 Jackie, was acquired by The Getty earlier this year. She currently teaches in the Graduate Fine Arts program at the California College of the Arts. She edited The Yes Men Activity Book, co-produced the publication New Art/Science Affinities, and is co-editing INCITE Journal of Experimental Media’s forthcoming issue, Sports. Suparak has advised various art organizations and served on numerous juries, boards, and panels, including Creative Capital, the Alpert Awards, Mike Kelley Foundation, and Brooklyn Museum. www.astriasuparak.com

Ashley D. DeHoyos

Ashley D. DeHoyos is an emerging curator from Houston, TX, who currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Photography from Sam Houston State University and her Masters in Fine Arts in Curatorial Practice from Maryland Institute College of Art. She has worked as an intern at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in partnership with ArtTable, and was an Urban Arts Leadership Fellow under the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance at Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts. Most recently, Ashley has been working as a MuseWeb Foundation Fellow at Baltimore Museum of Art, and Maryland Institute College of Art as a Community Art and Service Fellow.

José Ruiz

José Ruiz is a Peruvian-born artist and curator who lives and works between DC, Baltimore, and New York. Over the past fifteen years, he has mounted exhibitions and curatorial prompts for cities, museums, biennials, non-profits, galleries, and art fairs. These projects have taken place in street corners, community centers, universities, abandoned warehouses, creative incubators, and commercial spaces, both at the national and international level. His practice has been the subject of various publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, Arte Al Día, Artnet, and The Washington Post. He is the founder of Furthermore, a post-studio research, design and production lab operating out of DC and Brooklyn, and a partner and co-director at Present Co., a New York-based gallery and curatorial collective. www.furthermorellc.com www.present-co.com Ruiz currently serves as Director and Faculty in the Curatorial Practice MFA Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD. www.joseruizart.com

Eames Armstrong

Eames Armstrong is an interdisciplinary artist and curator, and the founder and director of Aether Art Projects, an organization which emphasizes experimentation, performance, and collaboration through exhibitions and events. Eames received a B.F.A. from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2010 with emphasis on painting, writing, and performance. Eames is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in studio art at George Washington University in Washington, DC. I bring principles of flexibility and collaboration from my own visual and performance art work to my curating. I believe in an integrated studio, writing, and curatorial practice. One of the many roles of the curator is to facilitate exchange among artists, I try to do this through organizing events independently as Aether Art Projects and in conjunction with galleries and organizations and through maintaining an online art journal, PERI0D. I know how Hans Ulrich Obrist felt when he said, “I feel an urgent need to produce communities.” Through art, and for me especially through performance, we can learn much about each other. We can learn about how another person thinks and experiences the world, and new ways to see and interact with other people through their expression of ideas. In organizing and facilitating a lot of art over the last few years, I have had the opportunity to be closely engaged with so many various creative processes. Each of these experiences makes up the basis of my curatorial approach. www.eamesarmstrong.com

Jackie Milad

Jackie Milad is an Egyptian-Honduran first generation American. She is a practicing visual artist and curator based in Baltimore City. She began her curatorial career as the Co-Founder of the now popular Transmodern Festival, an artist-run performance art and experimental media festival now in its 12th year. Throughout her curatorial career Milad has had the good fortune of working with many internationally recognized artists. She served as the Exhibitions Director for the Rosenberg Gallery at Goucher College, and has held the position of Gallery Director and Curator for the Stamp Gallery at University of Maryland in College Park. Milad now serves as the Chief Curator of Contemporary Art for the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington. In her role as an artist she has exhibited and performed internationally and nationally in venues such as the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, the Arlington Art Center and The Richard Foreman Ontological Theater in New York City. Milad has participated in numerous solo exhibitions most notably with Flashpoint Gallery in Washington D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts in Mazatlan, Mexico and Culiacan, Mexico. In 2010 Milad was awarded an individual artist grant from Maryland State Arts Council. In 2005 she earned her M.F.A. from Towson University where she was a recipient of a competitive Graduate Fellowship. In 2000 she received her B.F.A. from Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Massachusetts. In 1998, Milad studied painting at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy. More recently, she participated in an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2015. www.jackiemilad.com

Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell

Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell is a Washington, D.C. based curator, writer, arts manager and arts advocate. A writer for all things art, her work has been featured in The Washington Times, Examiner.com, CBS Local DC online, Brightest Young Things, and Plinth, among others. In 2014 she outfitted a series of professional development seminars, as well as a residency program for local emerging artists in North Bethesda, in addition to curating five exhibitions throughout the DMV region. As an independent curator, Kayleigh continues to work with art galleries and centers, with upcoming exhibitions opening in the Mid-Atlantic region, including VisArts and the Stamp Student Union Gallery in Maryland, and CUE Art Foundation in New York City. Kayleigh has worked with many cultural institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the Walters Art Museum, the National Archives and the David C. Driskell Center Collection at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her insights on art and culture have led to cooperative efforts with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Annual Downtown Hyattsville Arts Festival. Kayleigh earned her B.A. in Art History from the University of Maryland, College Park and her M.A. in Museum Studies from the George Washington University. She serves as Regional Programs Chair of ArtTable in Washington, DC, as well as serving on the Steering Committees of Emerging Arts Leaders DC . She is affiliated with Americans for the Arts, Emerging Arts Advocates – an initiative of Maryland Citizens for the Arts in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Young Patrons Committee of Torpedo Art Factory in Alexandria, Virginia.

Laura Roulet

Laura Roulet is an independent curator and writer, specializing in contemporary and Latin American art. She was one of five international curators chosen for the citywide public art project, 5 x 5, a major initiative sponsored by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 2012. She has organized exhibitions in Mexico, Puerto Rico and the U.S. including at the Art Museum of the Americas, the Mexican Cultural Institute, Artisphere, Hillyer Art Space, Project 4, Fusebox and the DC Art Center. Recent exhibits include the National Drawing Invitational (Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR), CSA: 40 Years of Community-Sourced Art (Arlington Arts Center, VA), Frances Gallardo: Meteorology (Target Gallery), Sculpting Outside the Lines, an outdoor sculpture exhibit in Foggy Bottom and Medios y ambientes in Mexico City. Laura’s publications include catalogue essays, encyclopedia entries, articles in American Art, Art Journal, Art Nexus, Sculpture, and the book Contemporary Puerto Rican Installation Art, the Guagua Aerea, the Trojan Horse and the Termite. She worked on the Ana Mendieta retrospective, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum in 2004, and contributed to that catalogue.