Building a Community of Practice at the 2026 Fellowship Convening

Earlier this month, we gathered the 2024 and 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans for the annual Fellowship Convening. Encompassing three days of gatherings and facilitated discussions, the Fellowship Convening is a powerful forum for building connections between Fellows, in which artists from the two most recent cohorts can meet each other and reflect together on what it means to be an artist today.

“Over the five-year development of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, we’ve come to see the Fellowship Convening less as an opportunity for professional development, and more as a space for true communion between artists,” said Solana Chehtman, the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Director of Artist Programs. “Artists tell us again and again that they’re hungry for more exchange and dialogue with their peers. Through the Convening, and regular virtual Artist Exchange sessions that we offer Fellows throughout the year, we are cultivating a self-supporting artist community across generations, geography, and a wide range of creative practices.”

Key themes shaped this year’s Fellowship Convening, centered on what it means to be an artist in the world right now. Sessions explored how to show up for yourself and your community, how to engage with the field in alignment with your values, and how to find and trust your own style of navigating it. From there, Fellows worked through how to put that into practice—advocating for yourself and recognizing your leverage as an artist at the center of the field. The convening also looked at alternatives being built by New Orleans-based artists—studio buildings, galleries, arts education spaces. All of this was grounded in the practice of Fellows sharing their work and offering each other support and advice.

The gathering kicked off on Thursday, June 4, with a Welcome Reception at Junebug in New Orleans’ Julia Street Gallery District. This informal dinner offered a moment for the artists and staff to meet in person, in typical New Orleans fashion—with rich food, festive drinks, and great music.

On Friday morning, we met at the Joan Mitchell Center to begin the facilitated sessions of the Convening. Following a brief welcome from the Foundation’s staff and a tour of the grounds, our Convening emcee, Solomon Matthews, offered some grounding in the history of the land and its people, then worked collaboratively with the artists to establish community agreements to support generative, respectful exchange throughout the sessions.

The group came back together late morning to begin the Fellows Workshare—a cornerstone of the Convening, in which each artist presents one artwork to their peers as an insight into their creative practice and some of the themes and questions they are currently engaged with. The workshares continued after lunch, with all 20 attending artists presenting their work.

Following the Workshares, artist and writer Damien Davis presented a participatory workshop, “Against Default Settings,” that invited artists to examine the often unspoken value systems informing how they navigate opportunity, survival, visibility, ethics, community, and artistic rigor.

Prior to the Workshop, artists were surveyed by Damien to help identify which default “roles” or “art personalities” they may fall into within their approach to navigating the art world. In his presentation at the Convening, Davis discussed each role with the group and offered additional personalized information with each artist. Through facilitated discussion, participants considered which professional behaviors have become automatic, which compromises have become normalized, and which inherited definitions of success may no longer serve them.

The Convening agenda for Friday concluded with dinner at Café Reconcile, a nonprofit organization and restaurant that supports young adults in New Orleans through workforce development and training. The Fellows were impressed with the institution’s mission and approach, honed over more than 25 years—and the food was delicious.

On Saturday morning, the Fellows again gathered at the Joan Mitchell Center, continuing the Convening sessions with a workshop entitled “Mutual Terms: Empathy, Rights, and Artist Contracts,” presented by Damien Davis and Lauren van Haaften-Schick, an art law professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Focusing on how artists can better understand and negotiate institutional relationships, Damien and Lauren explored common clauses in exhibition and commission agreements, as well as the history and legacy of artists’ contracts.

The group discussed the complex power dynamics at play between artists and institutions, sharing candidly with their peers about personal challenges and successes. The workshop concluded with a series of roleplaying exercises, in which artists practiced negotiating from both sides of the table. These exercises were designed to offer some perspective of what might motivate gallerists, museum workers, and other parties with which artists frequently enter into agreements, while also providing valuable opportunities for artists to practice advocating for themselves.

Following the “Mutual Terms” workshop, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Programs Team facilitated a series of Peer Learning Circles, in which each table of artists followed a specific methodology to discuss and collaborative problem-solve around an issue brought forth by one artist at their table. Based on the understanding that artists are often the best resource to each other, the Peer Learning Circles create space for Fellows to tap into the experience, expertise, and perspective of their peers around challenges they are currently facing within their practices, careers, or lives.

The final session of the convening was an artist-led panel called “Ask an Artist: What It Takes to Start Something,” featuring representatives from three New Orleans-based, artist-run initiatives. Ann Haley represented The Front, Sara Madandar represented Camp Street Studios and Parlour Gallery, and Shani Peters represented The Black School. Moderated by Jordan Amirkhani, the Foundation’s Program Manager, Artist Legacy & Engagement, this session recognized the importance of artist-run spaces as sites of artistic experimentation and new collective working habits. The panelists each shared an overview of their organization and fielded questions about what it takes to start and sustain a creative community over time.

To close out the Convening, our emcee Solomon Matthews invited attending artists and staff to share one word or sentiment that encapsulated what they were taking away from their time together. Responses reflected a strong sense of connection, community, and renewed clarity of purpose, alongside feelings of possibility, care, and momentum. The session concluded informally, with some participants gathering for an impromptu dance—an expression of the collective energy that had built over the course of the convening.

As we reflect back on this year’s Fellowship Convening, we share gratitude to our incredible facilitators and presenters, and to the artists for taking time away from their busy lives and practices to build community with us. It is our hope that the learnings from the Convening and the relationships nurtured during the time together will help sustain the Joan Mitchell Fellows and their practices for many years to come.

All photos by Melissa Dean. See more photos from the convening on Instagram, and learn more about the Joan Mitchell Fellowship here.