Contributors to Creating Future Memory 2025

Advisory Council Members

Lisa Darms is Executive Director of Hauser & Wirth Institute, a nonprofit devoted to artists' archives. The Institute seeks to make the field more equitable and accessible by funding archival projects and fostering networks to support communities that create, use and care for artists’ archives. As Senior Archivist at NYU’s Fales Library & Special Collections from 2009 to 2016 Lisa managed and co-curated the Downtown Collection of archives of artists, performers, and art collectives, and was founder and curator of the Riot Grrrl Collection. She is the author of The Riot Grrrl Collection (Feminist Press 2013) and co-author of Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz (Semiotext(e) 2018). Her recently completed book HAGiographies considers the responsibilities of fan-archivist-biographers to their subjects.

Ryan S. Flahive is an accomplished archivist and cultural heritage professional who specializes in preserving artist legacies and ensuring the long-term accessibility of creative archives. With over 15 years of experience, he helped spearhead archival initiatives for institutions such as the Institute of American Indian Arts, Poeh Cultural Center (Pojoaque Pueblo), and the Sharlot Hall Museum. Passionate about documenting artistic contributions, Flahive has secured significant funding for preservation projects and developed policies for ethical stewardship. As a national advisor and educator, Flahive actively shapes archival practices to honor artists' narratives and cultural histories for future generations.

Josh T. Franco is collector at large at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. He first joined the Archives as Latino collections specialist in 2015. Prior to joining the Smithsonian, he was an artist-guide at Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street while completing his PhD in art history at Binghamton University, SUNY.

Tempestt Hazel is a curator, writer, and co-founder of Sixty Inches From Center, a collective of editors, writers, artists, curators, librarians, and archivists who have published and produced collaborative projects about artists, archival practice, and culture in the Midwest since 2010. Across her practices and through Sixty, Tempestt has worked alongside artists, organizers, grantmakers, and cultural workers to explore solidarity economies, cooperative models, archival practice, future canon creation, and systems change in and through the arts. An especially cherished moment for Tempestt was when she received the 2019 J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists, which was the result of a nomination by archivists and members of The Blackivists. Tempestt was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, spent several years in the California Bay Area, and has called Chicago her second home for over 13 years.

Seitu Ken Jones is a Saint Paul, Minnesota-based artist whose practice hopes to restore our Beloved community by blending art, food, conversation and beauty. A 2013 Joyce Award, from Chicago's Joyce Foundation allowed Seitu to develop CREATE: the Community Meal, a dinner for 2,000 people at a table a half a mile long for an over the table conversation about healthy eating and food sovereignty. His 2017 HeARTside Community Meal in Grand Rapids, MI was awarded the Grand Juried Prize for ArtPrize Nine.

Chelsea Spengemann is the Executive Director of Soft Network, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2021, which includes the professional resource group AFELL (Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List), co-founded by Spengemann in 2019. Spengemann has overseen the Stan VanDerBeek Archive since 2008 and in 2019 she co-curated VanDerBeek + VanDerBeek with Sara VanDerBeek at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, NC. Spengemann was the curator for Becoming Disfarmer in 2014 and the Instant as Image in 2016, both for the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase. She has an MFA in Photography from Bard College, an MA in Art History from Purchase College and in 2019 completed the Aspen Institute Seminar for Artist Endowed Foundation Leaders.

Facilitators

Morgan Bassichis is a comedian, musician, artist, and writer who has been called “fiercely hilarious” by The New Yorker. Their work activates histories of queer and Jewish radicalism, and has been presented by the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia State Commonwealth, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the New Museum, The Kitchen, and Danspace Project. Their current show, Can I Be Frank?, which explores the life and work of downtown performer Frank Maya, returns to Soho Playhouse in July. Previous shows include A Crowded Field at Abrons Arts Center, about the use and abuse of Jewish holidays; Questions to Ask Beforehand at Bridget Donahue, as part of their exhibition there; and Don't Rain On My Bat Mitzvah with Creative Time. They were in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and the 2015 Greater New York exhibition at PS1. They edited and wrote the introduction for Nightboat Books' 2019 reissue of the cult classic The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, and published two books with Wendy's Subway: The Odd Years, published in 2020, and the anthology Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah, co-edited with Jay Saper and Rachel Valinsky and published in August 2023. Morgan has also participated in social movements for the past two decades, and works as a somatic coach for artists and organizers.

Yanira Castro's work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative, multimodal projects centered on land, citizenship, and governance, activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she has created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi. Recent work includes a public art project for the 2024 election, a performance manual for reckoning, a participatory podcast to rehearse for a collective future, and a tea ritual with NYC Girl Scouts Troop 6000. Castro has been commissioned by The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, MCA Chicago, PICA, and ICA/Boston, and supported by Creative Capital, MAP Fund, and others. She received two Bessie Awards and co-founded Creating New Futures, advocating for ethics, equity, and mutual care in the arts.

Report Writer

Sharon Mizota (she/her) is a researcher, metadata consultant, and art critic who works to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the historical record. Recent projects include research reports for the Community-Centered Archives Practice program at the University of California, Irvine Libraries and for Critical Minded, an initiative supporting cultural critics of color. She has written art reviews for the Los Angeles Times, Artforum, X-TRA, ARTNews, Hyperallergic and other publications. She is a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers' Grant and a coauthor of the award-winning book, Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art. She is a fourth-generation Japanese American settler on unceded Tongva and Chumash lands.

Speakers & Panelists

Ariel Aisiks is the Founder of the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to advancing the visibility and scholarship of Latin American modern and contemporary art. Through exhibitions at ISLAA’s Tribeca space and partnerships with institutions such as the Dia Art Foundation, CCS Bard, and the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, Aisiks has fostered new research, academic programs, and museum exhibitions that expand Latin American art’s representation in the United States. Under his leadership, ISLAA has supported hundreds of lectures, symposia, publications, and curatorial initiatives, while contributing important artworks to major museum collections. He has also led efforts to preserve and promote the legacies of key artists, including Jaime Davidovich, helping establish Latin American art as a vital field within global art history discourse.

Julie Ault is an artist, curator, editor, and writer focused on mobilizing art, artifacts, and documentary materials to broadcast and archive underestimated cultural histories. Her projects include exhibitions, publications, writing, and historical chronicles. Ault has edited, authored, and collaborated on over twenty publications, most recently Ordinary Things Will Be Signs For Us: Photographs by Corita (J&L Books/Magic Hour Press, 2023) and Hidden in Plain Sight: Selected Writings of Karin Higa (Dancing Foxes Press, 2022). Her exhibitions include Bruce Yonemoto: An Opening, O-Town House, Los Angeles (2023), and Paper Mirror: Nancy Spero at the Museo Tamayo and MoMA PS1 (2018–19). Ault co-founded the artists’ collaborative Group Material, active from 1979 to 1996. She is currently working on a project called American Sampler: Activating the Archive for the University of Michigan Museum of Art, drawing on UMich's Labadie Collection archive of papers of anarchism, protest, and social movements.

Dr. Judith F. Baca, an American visual artist, has spent over four decades creating impactful public art. In 1974, she founded Los Angeles’ first mural program, producing over 400 murals, employing thousands, and evolving into the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), where she is Artistic Director. Through the UCLA@SPARC Digital/Mural Lab, she champions digital tech for social justice and participatory art. Her monuments highlight history, community, and land. Her best-known work, The Great Wall of Los Angeles, begun in 1974, is a half-mile mural in the San Fernando Valley involving hundreds of youth, families, artists, and scholars. Baca is Professor Emeritus at UCLA, where she taught in Chicana/o Studies and World Arts and Cultures. In 2012, LAUSD named the Judith F. Baca Arts Academy in her honor. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships and the 2021 National Medal of Arts.

Kwame Samori Brathwaite is the Director of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive, overseeing preservation and collaborative projects aligned with the themes of activism, fashion, politics, and music found in his father’s work. He has written for National Geographic, and has lectured at Harvard Art Museums, The Courtauld Institute, Google, and Christie’s. Kwame co-curated Celebrity and the Everyday and curated the touring exhibition Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite (2019–2023), among others. He also serves as Managing Director at Tavo Partners. A graduate of Amherst College and USC’s Marshall School of Business, Kwame is a trustee of Aperture Foundation and Polytechnic School. Originally from New York City, he lives in Pasadena, CA.

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick is an artist, curator, and educator from Mōkapu, a peninsula on the windward side of Oʻahu, in U.S. occupied Hawaiʻi. Raised in a deep-rooted matriarchy, his work is guided by the multigenerational efforts of queer folk and Kānaka ʻŌiwi women, who have devoted their lives to art, education, organizing, and community in Hawaiʻi. In 2020 he co-founded kekahi wahi, a grassroots film initiative documenting stories of transformation across Moananuiākea, the greater Pacific. He holds a MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2019).

Kalia Brooks PhD, is the former Interim Executive Director and Director of Programs and Exhibitions at NXTHVN. In that role, she was responsible for the design and delivery of curatorial exhibitions, public programs, artist projects, community engagement initiatives, and the learning environment for the fellowship and apprenticeship programs. Her academic research covers art from the nineteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on emergent technologies and African American, trans-Atlantic, and diasporic cultures of the Americas. Within the professional development offered to artists-in-residence at NXTHVN (a fellowship program co-founded by artist Titus Kaphar), legacy planning is one of the main topics.

Zakiya Collier is an Afro-Carolinian archivist, memory worker, and educator. Her work and research explore archival practices that account for the material conditions of Black life and the role of cooperative thought in the sustainability of cultural memory. She is a member of Shift Collective, where she supports communities in collectively developing cultural memory practices and designing sustainable programs to autonomously preserve and share their own stories. Zakiya also leads The Black Memory Workers, a community of 250+ Black-diasporic memory workers committed to practicing care and intention as they prioritize the documentation, long-term preservation, and celebration of Black life and experiences. Their recent experience includes working on archival strategy with the Valerie J. Maynard Foundation, being the Program Director for Archiving the Black Web, co-producing the forthcoming documentary film Somebody’s Gone, serving as the first Digital Archivist at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and co-editing a special double issue of The Black Scholar on Black Archival Practice.

Cathleen Chaffee is the Charles Balbach Chief Curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, where she also stewards of the estate of Marisol (1930–2016), entrusted to the AKG by the artist upon her death. Among her major traveling exhibition projects are Marisol: A Retrospective (2023–25); Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon (2023–25); and Tony Conrad: A Retrospective (2018–19). She co-curated Stanley Whitney: The Italian Paintings, a collateral event at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. She previously held curatorial positions at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has written and lectured widely on contemporary artists and topics including language in Minimal and Conceptual art, the representation of labor in postwar art, and artist-curated exhibitions. She received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Leslie Cozzi is the Curator and Department Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Baltimore Museum of Art, one of the key partners of the Valerie J. Maynard Foundation. In particular, the museum has been innovative in advancing new strategies and roadmaps for ethical collection building and management, centering the twin values of artistic excellence and social justice in their mission, and focusing on artistic and community partnerships in curatorial decision-making.

Kyle Croft is the Executive Director of Visual AIDS. In his seven years with the organization, he has worked to preserve the legacies of artists lost to AIDS and support a global community of artists living with HIV. He is organizing the exhibition Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald, opening this July at the Bronx Museum, and has edited volumes on Darrel Ellis, Frederick Weston, and William Olander. He holds an MA in Art History from Hunter College.

Úrsula Davila-Villa is the co-founder of Davila-Villa & Stothart (DVS), which focuses on supporting the artistic legacies of artists and families whose work has been historically marginalized or considered unconventional. Her previous roles include being a Partner at Alexander Gray Associates gallery from 2012 to 2017 and Associate Curator of Latin American Art at The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin from 2005 to 2012. In 2012, she co-curated El Panal/ The Hive: Third Poli/Gráfica Triennal of San Juan de Puerto Rico. She holds an MA in Museum Studies from New York University and a BA in architecture and urbanism from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, and the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. A trustee of the Lorraine O’Grady Trust, Úrsula previously served on the boards of VisualAIDS and Women's Studio Workshop, and is currently a board member of ArtTable.

Andrew M. Elder, University Archivist and Curator of Special Collections at University of Massachusetts Boston, has worked in a number of roles in the Joseph P. Healey Library since 2010. He has been a part of the department’s Mass. Memories Road Show team since 2011 and is co-developer of RoPA, the Roadmap for Participatory Archiving. Andrew is also a longtime volunteer archivist at The History Project, a community archive documenting LGBTQ+ history in Boston. His expertise and areas of interest include digital archives and participatory and community archiving. Andrew received an MS in Library and Information Science and Archives Management from Simmons University and a BA in English and Women's Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Teresita Fernández (b.1968) is a NYC based artist whose work is characterized by an expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape—from the subterranean to the cosmic, from national borders to the more elusive landscapes we carry within. Her sculptural work, public art, films, and installations poetically challenge ideas about land and landscape by exposing the history of colonization and the inherent bias embedded in how we imagine and define place. Fernández is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, Meridian Cultural Diplomacy Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, American Academy of Rome Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant. Her works have been shown both nationally and internationally at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy, among others. In 2011, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and is the first Latina to serve on the 100-year-old federal panel. In 2016, she conceived of and directed the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium with the Ford Foundation.

Ryan S. Flahive, an accomplished archivist and cultural heritage professional, specializes in preserving artist legacies and ensuring the long-term accessibility of creative archives. With over 15 years of experience, he helped spearhead archival initiatives for institutions such as the Institute of American Indian Arts, Poeh Cultural Center (Pojoaque Pueblo), and the Sharlot Hall Museum. Passionate about documenting artistic contributions, Flahive has secured significant funding for preservation projects and developed policies for ethical stewardship. As a national advisor and educator, Flahive actively shapes archival practices to honor artists' narratives and cultural histories for future generations.

Josh T. Franco is collector at large at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. He first joined the Archives as Latino collections specialist in 2015. Prior to joining the Smithsonian, he was an artist-guide at Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, while completing his PhD in art history at Binghamton University, SUNY.

Steven G. Fullwood is an archivist, writer, and cultural documentarian committed to preserving the histories of people of African descent. A Toledo, Ohio, native, Steven’s career spans over 30 years, including 19+ years at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where he founded the In the Life Archive, the largest collection of materials by and about LGBTQ people of African descent. In 2017, he co-founded the Nomadic Archivists Project with Miranda Mims, to aid in the documentation of the global Black experience. His recent publication, Artists as Writers: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life (co-edited with Seph Rodney), is a collection of first-person narratives that explore the day-to-day lives of individuals who use writing as both a creative practice and a means of sustaining their daily lives. In 2004, Steven founded Vintage Entity Press, where he published works of poetry, fiction, and anthologies, including Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call (2014) and Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books (with RedBone Press, 2007).

Cat Gardère is the daughter of Haitian-born American artist Paul Gardère and currently serves as Director of his Brooklyn estate studio to steward her father’s legacy in the art world and avail his work for scholarship. Paul Gardère, who was born in Port-au-Prince in 1944 and died in NYC in 2011, created mixed-media works reflecting the complex interplay of Haitian, French, and American cultures, which comprised his lived experience and explored the legacy of their historical confrontations. In addition to her Director role, Cat is also a seasoned Creative Producer specializing in post-production, having worked with esteemed lens-based artists to print and coordinate global exhibitions, publish fine art books, and tackle editing, color, and visual effects for television and feature-length film projects, as well as managed the studios and archives of late-stage photographers early in her career. Her broad, multidisciplinary experience gives her a unique and intimate view into management of a wide variety of artists and their work at numerous stages of life and career.

Theaster Gates is an artist whose practice finds roots in conceptual formalism, sculpture, space theory, land art, and performance. Trained in urban planning and within the tradition of Japanese ceramics, Gates's artistic philosophy is guided by the concepts of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Animism—most notably honoring the "spirit within things." Foundational to Gates' practice is his custodianship and critical redeployment of culturally significant Black objects, archives, and spaces. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, Gates extends the life of disappearing and bygone histories, places, traditions, and loved ones. Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2025); Isamu Noguchi Award (2023); National Buildings Museum Vincent Scully Prize (2023); Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2022); an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (2021); the World Economic Forum Crystal Award (2020); J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2018); Nasher Sculpture Prize (2018); Sprengel Museum Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017); and Artes Mundi 6 Prize (2015).

Thelma Golden is the Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual arts by artists of African descent. She began her career in 1987 as a fellow at the Studio Museum, then joined the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. Golden returned to the Studio Museum in 2000 as the Deputy Director for exhibitions and programs and was named the Director and Chief Curator in 2005. Golden serves on the board of directors for the Barack Obama Foundation, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Mellon Foundation. In 2010, she was appointed to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House by President Barack Obama. She holds a BA in Art History and African American Studies from Smith College.

Sam Gordon is a New York­-based artist and curator. In 2017 he founded Gordon Robichaux, a gallery and curatorial agency with Jacob Robichaux in Union Square, New York. Recent curatorial projects include The Frieze Library: Volume Seven, Frieze New York, 2025; Downtown 2021, La MaMa Gallery, NY, 2021; and Souls Grown Diaspora, apexart, NY, 2020. Reviews and features have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula magazine. Gordon's own painting, drawing, photography, and video work was regularly presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions at Feature Inc. from 1997–2013. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY. Gordon has been a visiting professor at the California Institute for the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Francis Greenburger is an American real estate developer, literary agent, author, philanthropist, activist, and founder of Time Equities Inc., Art Omi, Inc., and the Greenburger Center for Social & Criminal Justice. In 1992, he founded Art Omi, a sculpture and architecture park and arts center that also provides residencies for visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians, and architects from all over the world. He serves on the board of several not-for-profit organizations and is an active donor to over 300 charitable organizations.

Heather Hart is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the power in thresholds, questioning dominant narratives, and creating alternatives to them. She has been awarded grants from Anonymous Was A Woman, Graham Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Jerome Foundation, NYFA, and Harpo Foundation. Hart co-founded Black Lunch Table with jina valentine in 2005 and has won a Creative Capital award, Wikimedia Foundation grants, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, and an Andy Warhol Foundation of Art grant with that project. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Storm King Art Center, The Kohler Art Center, North Carolina Museum of Art, Eastern Illinois University, Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and University of Toronto, Scarborough, among others. She was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and was awarded the 2025-26 Rome Prize. Hart studied at Skowhegan, Whitney ISP, Cornish College of the Arts, and Princeton University, and received her MFA from Rutgers University. She is an Assistant Professor at Mason Gross School for Art + Design, a member of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, an external advisor for AUC Art Collective, and a trustee at Storm King Art Center.

Tempestt Hazel is a curator, writer, and co-founder of Sixty Inches From Center, a collective of editors, writers, artists, curators, librarians, and archivists who have published and produced collaborative projects about artists, archival practice, and culture in the Midwest since 2010. Across her practices and through Sixty, Tempestt has worked alongside artists, organizers, grantmakers, and cultural workers to explore solidarity economies, cooperative models, archival practice, future canon creation, and systems change in and through the arts. An especially cherished moment for Tempestt was when she received the 2019 J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists, which was the result of a nomination by archivists and members of The Blackivists. Tempestt was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, spent several years in the California Bay Area, and has called Chicago her second home for over 13 years.

Mikiko Ino was born in Japan and established the fashion buying consulting company, LLJ USA Inc., there in 1990. She later moved to New York City where she continued to work with high-end designers like Jason Wu and Oscar De La Renta and introduced them to Japanese retailers. In 2007, Mikiko met and later married Kikuo Saito. Following Saito’s death in 2016, she founded KinoSaito in 2018 while continuing to work in fashion merchandising and managing her late husband’s NYC studio/estate.

Seitu Ken Jones (b. 1951) is an artist based in Saint Paul, MN, whose interdisciplinary practice works to restore our Beloved communities by blending art, food, conversation, and beauty. Working on his own or in collaboration, Jones has created over 40 large-scale public art works. He's been awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, a Bush Artist Fellowship, a Bush Leadership Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts - Theater Communication Group Designer Fellowship. Seitu was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and was an Artist-in-Residence in the Harvard Ceramics Program. He was Millennium Artist-in-Residence for 651 Arts in Brooklyn, NY, and was the first Artist-in-Residence for the City of Minneapolis. In 2014, he integrated artwork into three key stations for the Greenline Light Rail Transit in the Twin Cities. A 2013 Joyce Award, from Chicago's Joyce Foundation, allowed Seitu to develop CREATE: the Community Meal, a dinner for 2,000 people at a table a half a mile long. He is the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Artist Award from the McKnight Foundation. His 2017 HeARTside Community Meal in Grand Rapids, MI, was awarded the Grand Juried Prize for ArtPrize Nine. Seitu has a BS in Landscape Design and an MLS in Environmental History from the University of Minnesota.

Alex Klein is the Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Contemporary Austin. Prior to her current role, she held positions at organizations including the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania (ICA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is the curator of two legacy survey exhibitions, Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses and Barbara Kasten: Stages, for which she worked closely with the artists and in their archives to bring renewed attention to their practices. Beginning in 2016, she also organized the website, podcast, and institutional partnership series I is for Institute, which documents the work of individuals in contemporary arts organizations to shape and reimagine the field.

Lisa Le Feuvre is a curator, writer, and editor. In 2018 she became the inaugural Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, the artist foundation dedicated to the legacies of artists Nancy Holt (1938-2014) and Robert Smithson (1938-1973), building the foundation from the ground up. From its home base in New Mexico, the Foundation collaborates with artists, writers, thinkers, and institutions to realize exhibitions, publish books, initiate artist commissions, program educational events, encourage research, develop collections across the world, and create the Atlas of Artworks for Holt and Smithson, a catalogue raisonné of sorts. Le Feuvre has curated more than seventy exhibitions as an institutional and independent curator, edited over thirty books and journals, spoken at 150 museums and universities, and has published more than 125 essays and interviews with artists. Her 2024/25 curated exhibitions include Nancy Holt: Circles of Light at the Gropius Bau, Berlin (curated with Clara Meister), Robert Smithson / Teresita Fernández at SITE SANTA FE (curated with Fernández), and Nancy Holt: Power Systems and Maria Hupfield: The Endless Return of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan), both at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio. Previously based in the UK, Le Feuvre led the Henry Moore Institute (2010-2017) and directed the contemporary art program at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (2005-2009), among other positions.

Hailey Loman is an artist based in Los Angeles. She is committed to understanding, rupturing, and creating a communal art practice and life that is not overdetermined by values that favor wealth creation and sustain historical inequities. Loman began the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) with a group of artists to share artistic archival materials, with the goals of making the conditions and impossibilities we live and work with more visible. Loman also launched the Oral History Group (OHG), an oral history cooperative that enriches and complicates LACA’s physical holdings. This past year, she has developed Archive Night School (ANS), an after-work education program that emphasizes conversational and participatory inquiry, while also building skills in archival techniques and conceptual considerations. These projects enable us to learn from each other’s experiences and create new works that privilege the desires and needs of our communities.

Nicholas Lowe is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, project manager, and curator. He is known for his photography, video, and installation works from the 1980s and 90s that focus on experiences of AIDS and HIV. Lowe has also worked in prisons and with farming communities in the UK, to facilitate opportunities where the details and information from personal archives and from first-voice accounts are offered as a commentary upon prevailing social conditions. Lowe has facilitated exhibitions, publications, and archival collecting. Alongside his tenure as Associate Professor in Historic Preservation, he is curator of the Goat Island Archive and advisor to the Roger Brown Study Collection, a special collection of the School of The Art Institute of Chicago.

Antonio D. Lyons is a multidisciplinary artist known for his work across the United States and South Africa. Some of his notable projects include: American History (Actor), Hotel Rwanda (Actor), and We Dance We Pray (Musician/Poet). He is also the Executive Director of the Valerie J. Maynard Foundation, where during his tenure he created a shared internship program in honor of artist Valerie J. Maynard in partnership with the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and received 2024–2026 Fellowship funding and support from the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA). He is the Director of the The EnActors at Georgetown University, where he also lectures in the Department of Performing Arts. Maynard was a pioneering member of the Black Arts Movement and beloved icon of the Baltimore arts community.

Amalia Mesa-Bains is an artist and cultural critic. Her artworks, primarily interpretations of traditional Chicano altars, resonate both in contemporary formal terms and in their ties to her Chicano community and history. She has pioneered the documentation and interpretation of Chicano traditions in Mexican-American art and is a leader in the field of community arts. Among her many awards is the distinguished MacArthur Fellowship. She is Professor Emerita in the Visual and Public Art department at California State University at Monterey Bay. She is co-author with bell hooks of Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism, as well as many essays on Latinx art history.

Whitney Mashburn is a Disabled independent curator and writer. Her work navigates the intersection of contemporary art and accessibility activism via relational curating—valuing artists over art objects. Her current project, a living archive entitled "Holding Space," bears witness to the lived experiences of those marginalized by chronic illness and disability through artist interviews and manifestos, exhibitions and a permanent collection, and community-building events and resources. Her other research and projects collaboratively investigate tactile aesthetics and institutional critique via social practice. She holds an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies, an MA in Disability Studies and Counselor Education, and a BA in History of Art and Studio Art from Vanderbilt University. She lives on the ancestral lands of the Massachusett, Pokanoket, and Wampanoag peoples, colonially known as Boston.

Marilyn Nance is a visual artist who has produced exceptional photographs of unique moments in the cultural history of the United States and the African Diaspora, and possesses an archive of images of late-20th-century African American life. She encourages people of all ages to protect and organize their personal archives and see themselves as designers, producers, and owners of information. Nance is the matriarch of The Santana Project, an intergenerational, interdisciplinary art collective. She is also a long-time friend of Valerie Maynard and key Board member of the Valerie J. Maynard Foundation, who shared her knowledge and experience on legacy stewardship with the team.

Glenn Phillips is Chief Curator at the Getty Research Institute. He is a specialist in the history of curating and the international history of conceptual art, with a focus on video and performance art in Europe and the Americas. His acquisitions for the GRI include the archives of Eleanor Antin, Simone Forti, Mary Kelly, Allan Sekula, Claes Oldenburg, Harald Szeemann, Harry Shunk, and the video archives of the Long Beach Museum of Art and The Kitchen. His curatorial projects, often organized collaboratively, include Lumen: The Art and Science of Light, 800-1600; Barbara T. Smith: The Way to Be (2023); Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures (2021); Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions (2018-19); Artists and Their Books (2018); Video Art in Latin America (2017); Yvonne Rainer: Dances and Films (2014); and It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles, 1969-73 (2011-12).

Juan Sánchez is a painter, photographer, printmaker, and video artist, born to immigrant working-class Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, New York. He is part of a generation of artists-such as Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Pepón Osorio, and Papo Colo-who in the 1980s and '90s explored questions of ethnic, racial, and national identity in their work. Among numerous group exhibitions in national and international gallery and museum venues, Sánchez had solo exhibitions at BRIC Arts/Media House, P.S.1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, El Museo del Barrio, Exit Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, the 5th Havana Biennale, and El Museo de Historia, Antropologia y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico. Among several permanent collections, his art is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, El Museo del Barrio, and The Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Sánchez has been awarded grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Sánchez earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and a MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University. He is Professor of Art at Hunter College in New York City.

Komal Shah, originally from Ahmedabad, India, migrated to the US in 1991 to study computer science in California. After completing her Masters at Stanford, she earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, eventually holding positions in the executive suites of Oracle, Netscape, and Yahoo. In 2008, Shah left the tech industry to focus on philanthropic pursuits. She then began developing the Shah Garg Collection with her husband and tech entrepreneur Gaurav Garg, solidifying a vision for the collection’s emphasis on women artists in 2014. Today, they are focused on amplifying the voices of women artists and artists of color through the Shah Garg Foundation.

Anita Sharma is a visual arts archivist, curator, and the founder of the Women Artists Archive Miami (WAAM), a digital initiative committed to preserving the studio archives and legacies of women and non-binary artists in South Florida. With over two decades of experience in archival practice, Anita centers accessibility, collaboration, and equity in her work, challenging institutional models of preservation through community-led, participatory approaches. Her practice bridges contemporary art and social justice, with a focus on uplifting diasporic and underrepresented voices. A first-generation South Asian immigrant, Sharma’s archival work has spanned international contexts, including early contributions to SALIDAA (South Asian Diaspora Literature and Arts Archive) in London and archival stewardship at Bose Pacia Gallery and the studio archives of Indian American printmaker Zarina Hashmi (1937–2020) in New York. She brings a diasporic lens to cultural memory work, emphasizing the importance of reflective, relational, and context-driven archival care. Through WAAM and beyond, she continues to develop platforms for creative preservation that honor lived experience and collectivity.

Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski is an artist, archivist, living in Saint Paul. She holds a BA in Design Studies, from Goldsmiths, University of London, an MA in Archives and Records Management from UCL, and is currently completing a PhD at Chelsea College of Arts, University of Arts London/Tate. She is the author of Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life (Thames & Hudson, 2024). She is currently the Project Manager for the recently established George Morrison Catalogue Raisonné Project, a phased ongoing endeavor to preserve and safeguard the artistic practice and legacy of George Morrison. In collaboration with art historian and archivist Alexandra Nicome, she is also part of the archival and curatorial team for The Black Gate, a radical archival legacy project founded by multidisciplinary artist Seitu K. Jones. Her research explores the synergy between (self) archiving as a curatorial method and artistic practice, and is grounded in Black feminisms and DIY Queer culture/s.

Chelsea Spengemann is the Executive Director of Soft Network, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2021, which includes the professional resource group AFELL (Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List), co-founded by Spengemann in 2019. Spengemann has overseen the Stan VanDerBeek Archive since 2008. In 2019, she co-curated VanDerBeek + VanDerBeek with Sara VanDerBeek at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, NC. Spengemann was the curator for Becoming Disfarmer in 2014 and The Instant as Image in 2016, both for the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase. She has an MFA in Photography from Bard College, an MA in Art History from Purchase College, and in 2019, completed the Aspen Institute Seminar for Artist Endowed Foundation Leaders.

Sreedevi Sripathy is the Senior Program Manager at the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), where she leads initiatives to ensure South Asian Americans are recognized as an essential part of the American story, overseeing storytelling projects that span 250 years of South Asian American history. She previously served as Managing Director of Distribution and Content Management at ITVS, where she supported independent filmmakers and award-winning series Independent Lens (PBS) and Global Voices (WORLD Channel).

Mindy Tousley, originally a native of Western New York, has lived in Cleveland since 1992. She graduated from the State University College at Buffalo in 1983, with a BS in Design. Tousley brings a unique set of skills and experiences to AAWR, where she has led the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve as Executive Director since November of 2014. She co-directed City Artists at Work for 17 years in Cleveland’s Campus Inc. District. Her past experiences as a former Lakewood gallery owner and Akron Gallery Director, with experience in art conservation and as an independent curator, have given her contacts in the arts communities of Cuyahoga, Summit, Lake, and Lorain Counties. She was Secretary of the Northern Ohio Art Dealers Association for three years and coordinator of the 2014 ART Expo. She is also a proud member of the CMA Print Club, where she currently chairs the Publications Committee, and an award-winning artist herself. Her own work is held in both corporate and private collections locally and nationally.

Dyani White Hawk (b. 1976, Sičáŋǧu Lakota) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis. Her practice, strongly rooted in painting and beadwork, extends into sculpture, installation, video, and performance, reflecting upon cross-cultural experiences through the amalgamation of influences from Lakota and Euro/American abstraction. White Hawk was featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Her largest survey exhibition, spanning 15 years, will open at the Walker Art Center in October 2025, and will travel to Remai Modern in 2026. White Hawk has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, Joan Mitchell Foundation, McKnight Foundation, and Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her work can be found in many public and private collections, such as the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is represented by Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis.

Betty Yu is an award-winning filmmaker, socially engaged multimedia artist, photographer, and activist born and raised in NYC. She integrates documentary film, photography, installation, new media, and community-infused approaches into her practice. Her work addresses labor, immigration, gentrification, abolition, racism, militarism, and transgender equality. She co-founded Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective advancing anti-displacement fights. Yu’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, NY Historical Society, and internationally. Her installations include The Garment Worker and Resistance in Progress. Her documentary Resilience screened at the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and her film Three Tours won the Aronson Social Justice Award. She holds degrees from NYU and Hunter College and teaches at Marymount Manhattan College. Her forthcoming book, Family Amnesia: Chinese American Resilience, will be released in Summer 2025.