Art 50 2024: Introduction
Art 50 2024: Dealers
Art 50 2024: Advocates and Supporters
Art 50 2024: Collectors and Philanthropists
Here are Chicago’s Art 50 2024 Directors and Curators.
Afzal Ahmad and Shireen Ahmad/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Shireen Ahmad and Afzal Ahmad
South Asia Institute
Since opening in 2019, the South Asia Institute has been a major cultural touchpoint and space for exciting artistic developments in Chicago. Co-founders Shireen and Afzal Ahmad established the institution with the mission to amplify South Asian voices as well as create a space where the symbiotic relationship between the past and present can be used as a starting point to imagine the future. Through programming including but not limited to curated exhibitions, stimulating artist talks and educational endeavors, SAI brings people together to learn about and celebrate the power of art to form a deeper sense of community. By welcoming a vastly diverse audience, the Ahmads charge forward in their mission of not only centering South Asian artists but fostering a space in which preconceived stereotypes can be shattered. (Regan Dockery)
Laura-Caroline de Lara and Ionit Behar/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Ionit Behar and Laura-Caroline de Lara
DePaul Art Museum
“We’re really about reshaping the position of museums in the twenty-first century. Our job is not just to ensure that people see themselves represented in museum spaces; it’s also about giving Chicagoans the tools, space and agency to know that they are instrumental in shaping contemporary art as a whole.”says DePaul Art Museum director Laura-Caroline de Lara. DPAM is one of the most consistently innovative art spaces in Chicago, and Ionit Behar’s masterful curation blends a nuanced understanding of the museum’s collection with a conscious eye on Chicago’s contemporary art scene. Exhibitions at DPAM navigate difficult questions with a focus on the museum’s responsibility to promote conversation, and the push to present bilingual exhibitions at DPAM means those conversations are accessible to a larger audience. Says Behar, “One of the most important things for our museum, and museums in general, I think, is to be in constant, vital transformation.” (Frank Geiser)
Kathleen Bickford Berzock/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Kathleen Bickford Berzock
Block Museum at Northwestern University
Kathleen Bickford Berzock’s path to Northwestern a decade ago makes sense when you see the whole picture. With a PhD in African Art History and eighteen years at the Art Institute of Chicago as the curator of African art, landing at Northwestern, with a renowned African studies program and one of the “most important Africana libraries in the world,” is a natural progression, even if her current exhibition portfolio spans a greater world geography than her previous studies would indicate. At Block, as the associate director of curatorial affairs, she oversees the curatorial program, including exhibitions, acquisitions and publications which, in recent years, have seen the museum probing the edges of art discourse. “Since I started at the Block together with Lisa Corrin, the director who started about a year before I did,” Berzock says, “we’ve been thinking about what it means to have an art museum at Northwestern University and how we can best align with the context of Northwestern, which really focuses on interdisciplinarity, on global perspectives and on issues like equity and accessibility.” In January, the museum opens the four-years-in-the-making “Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland” which brings much of this to fruition. “This is going to be an exhibition that looks at art in Chicago through Indigenous perspectives, both working with artists in communities that are Chicago-based and also Chicago displaced,” Berzock says. “So we asked ourselves, ‘What can we do in this arena that would be new and different?'” Beyond this, they’ve been “putting more focus on also enlarging the collection toward teaching and learning on campus,” she says. “We’re interested in the way that art is this great portal for sometimes allowing us to have difficult conversations or to think in new ways about things.” (Brian Hieggelke)
Monique Brinkman-Hill/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Monique Brinkman-Hill
South Side Community Art Center
Big things are in the works for this historic place, founded in 1940 as the first Black art institution in the United States. Executive director Monique Brinkman-Hill says they’re deep into a capital campaign, with nearly $10 million raised so far—out of about $15 million needed—to rebuild the coach house and restore the main house. “We are going to have capacity to resume classrooms in the basement, we’re going to have capacity for larger, more climate-controlled space for our archives and our collections,” Brinkman-Hill says. “We’ll have more workspace for the team, for the artists, we’re adding air conditioning, updating plumbing and lighting and electrical and all those things.” This means a temporary move for the organization sometime next year, as the work overtakes the facility for a couple of years. But before then, SSCAC will produce a few more exhibitions: “Resource: Art and Resourcefulness in Black Chicago,” curated by Bethany Hill and LaMar Gayles and opening in mid-September, and an exhibition devoted to Black women art collectors in early 2025. The organization marks eighty-five years in 2025, and Brinkman-Hill says “we’re actually anticipating growth in ways that we’ve only imagined.” (Brian Hieggelke)
Scott Vincent Campbell/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Scott Vincent Campbell
Independent Curators International
You can be forgiven if you’re not super-familiar with the nonprofit Independent Curators International (ICI), even though it will be marking its fiftieth birthday next year, because, until Scott Campbell was hired as its Midwest Programs Manager, its staff of fourteen or so was entirely New York-based. Campbell is an artist and curator originally from New York himself, who spent time in Detroit before coming to the University of Chicago for his MFA. Soon after, he joined ICI where he’s working on a professional development program called the Chicago Curatorial Seminar, for six to eight emerging BIPOC curators in the Chicago area. It’s hard to imagine this now, but fifty years ago, most museums did not have contemporary art curators on staff, so ICI was formed to fill the gap. The world’s come full circle since then, of course, and today ICI exists as a support system for curatorial practice both inside and outside museums. Campbell describes their mission as having three different pillars: working with curators and helping them produce exhibitions, professional development programs and, finally, public programming. So how did Chicago end up being the first outpost outside of New York? You can thank Expo Chicago for that, as the art fair has been collaborating with ICI on an annual gathering for a decade, helping the organization tap into a growing network approaching 500 curators in the Midwest alone. (Brian Hieggelke)
Julie Carpenter/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Julie Carpenter
Epiphany Center for the Arts
Before coming to Epiphany just a year ago, Julie Carpenter was with Landmarks Illinois, where she oversaw the Driehaus Foundation Preservation Awards; the Oak Park Art League’ and Visitor Services at Unity Temple. This year, she has curated between thirty-five and forty exhibitions in the space’s galleries. Carpenter loves the camaraderie that happens between artists, and the diversity she works hard to achieve. The current shows are among her favorites, created to be highlighted during the Democratic National Convention, which will hold some events at Epiphany. There is a narrative and a common thread between these shows, making them particularly meaningful for Carpenter, who likes to curate as storytelling. (Susan Aurinko)
Dieter Roelstraete and Elspeth Carruthers/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Elspeth Carruthers and Dieter Roelstraete
The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society
Executive director Elspeth Carruthers and curator Dieter Roelstraete of the Neubauer Collegium, located on the campus of The University of Chicago, have established themselves as powerful contributors to the city’s cultural landscape. By presenting art through the context of academic research, the Neubauer Collegium investigates the collaborative relationship between art and thought. With its doors always open to the public, the space created by Carruthers and Roelstraete serves as an incubator of ideas—one that does not ask you to have an answer, but rather begs you to consider that through creative exploration you might find yourself on the pathway to one. Thought-provoking exhibitions curated by Roelstraete and collaborations and partnerships spearheaded by Carruthers work together to ensure the Neubauer Collegium is one of the most dynamic spaces in the city as well as a compelling space of connection for not only the influential art scene of the South Side, but the entire Chicago area. (Regan Dockery)
Nathan Mason, Joanna Goebel and Jimmy Castillo/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Jimmy Castillo, Joanna Goebel and Nathan Mason
City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events
Jimmy Castillo, who is now the director of Public Art, Joanna Goebel, who has been with DCASE twice in her career, and Nathan Mason, who has been at DCASE for decades, worked on the O’Hare Terminal Five, or T5, as a team, along with Lydia Ross, who stewarded the project for four years as the former Director of Public Art. The multiple-exhibition project features artists drawn from recommendations and vetted by a team of curators. The trio reported to the Department of Aviation, and worked closely with the entire team of designers, artists, and a panel of advisors. The T5 project is just one of more than sixty new art projects and collaborations taking place in the city. It takes a village to make a city bloom, and DCASE is critical to nurturing Chicago’s garden. (Susan Aurinko)
Joey Orr and Gwendolyn Perry Davis/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Gwendolyn Perry Davis and Joey Orr
MCA Chicago
As a native Chicagoan, Gwendolyn Perry Davis would know as well as anyone the importance of the Museum of Contemporary Art and now, as its deputy director and chief operating officer, she has a direct hand in shaping its future. Along with Joey Orr, the MCA’s newly arrived deputy director and chief of curatorial affairs, their vision for the organization’s future is driven by social consciousness while expanding on the work done before them. For Davis that means increasing access to art for people of color and other underrepresented groups. Chicago’s contemporary art community is diverse and dynamic and Davis and Orr will be working with the MCA to present an engaging roster of exhibitions, programs and performances that reflect it. (Jen Torwudzo-Stroh)
Brookes Ebetsch/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Brookes Ebetsch
Chicago Artists Coalition
Born outside of Chicago in the western suburbs of Wheaton, Illinois, the new executive director of the Chicago Artists Coalition comes to the CAC by way of the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre and School of Performing Arts. Though her aunt ran a high-school theater program, Ebetsch was immersed in a visual arts background growing up, with her grandmother and mother both artists. Now an artist herself, Ebetsch has a BFA in Fine Arts Studio from the University of Notre Dame, and understands how essential artists are to the collective. “My goal is to build a community of unapologetic celebration, support and lifelong learning that will be the legacy of CAC for another fifty years in the future,” says Ebetsch. She believes that the “alchemy exists in the interaction between art, artist and patron.” (Zara Yost)
Chirag Badlani and Jan Kallish/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Fred Eychaner, Chirag Badlani and Jan Kallish
Wrightwood 659
Wrightwood 659 was inaugurated in Lincoln Park in late 2018, and has since put forth a staggering exhibition program focusing on architecture and social issues under executive director Jan Kallish. With exhibitions funded by Fred Eychaner’s Alphawood Foundation under executive director Chirag Badlani, Wrightwood has taken advantage of a unique venue—an early-twentieth-century apartment converted into an exhibition space by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando—to present solo showcases of artists like Michiko Itatani, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and even the first major retrospective of Greco-American sculptor Chryssa. Later this month, Wrightwood 659 will present four works by Ghanaian-born filmmaker John Akomfrah. (Charles Venkatesh Young)
Sarah Guernsey, Giampaolo Bianconi, Caitlin Haskell and Thea Liberty Nichols/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Sarah Guernsey, Caitlin Haskell, Giampaolo Bianconi, and Thea Liberty Nichols
Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago is the 9,000-pound gorilla in virtually all categories it plays in, but in spite of its weight, a plodding risk-averse institution it is not. Its latest exhibitions in modern and contemporary art are rewriting the canonical history to include women artists who have been relatively overlooked and doing so in such a way that they’ve been popular hits. Last fall’s “Remedios Varo: Science Fictions,” co-curated by Caitlin Haskell, rewrote the book on Surrealism, and this year’s Christina Ramberg retrospective, co-curated by Thea Liberty Nichols, reintroduced a powerful voice to the Chicago Imagist conversation. The Modern and Contemporary team, under the leadership of deputy director Sarah Guernsey, not only organizes these exhibitions, but is also responsible for collection research and acquisitions. While it’s tempting to imagine AIC curators with a blank check, the reality is the acquisitions are very targeted. “We have such a strong contemporary collection that’s been built for decades, and I think that one of the special things about the Art Institute collection is that it’s extremely precise,” Giampaolo Bianconi says. “It has such specific strengths, and we’re always thinking about not only the figures that are missing, that need to be kind of put back into it, but who are the artists working today that we think are most suited for the strengths of our collection.” While the “Remedios Varo” exhibition is now closed, the museum did acquire one of her paintings, giving a permanent resonance to that show. (Bianconi mentions the recent acquisition of the museum’s first Carolee Schneemann work as filling in “a big gap for us” as well.) What’s next? Haskell has an exhibition in the works about the month that Frida Kahlo and Mary Reynolds spent together in Paris. Bianconi has a show of seventeen works next spring by H.C. Westermann that were donated to the museum by the Alan and Dorothy Press Collection, followed by Iman Issa next summer on the Bluhm Family Terrace for her Chicago debut. And Nichols? “I have a little longer lead,” she says, “but for winter 2026, I’m working on a drawing survey with the artist Carroll Dunham and it covers fifty years of his artistic practice, works on paper, and it sort of builds on his long relationship with the museum and our excellent holding of his works on paper, prints and drawings. So, to be continued.” (Brian Hieggelke)
Karen Irvine and Asha Iman Veal/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Karen Irvine and Asha Iman Veal
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Asha Iman Veal, associate curator, and Karen Irvine, the chief curator and deputy director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, have been responsible for some of the city’s most exciting photography exhibitions in recent years. Veal is an emerging force in the photography world. She’s managed multiple critical acquisitions into MoCP’s permanent collection, served as a board member at the Filter Photo Festival, and curated the museum’s immensely popular project, “LOVE: Still Not the Lesser.” In January 2025 Veal’s “Shore/Lines by Regina Agu” will open and in January 2026 the final show in the “LOVE: Still Not the Lesser” series will take place. Veal was also a distinguished jury reviewer for the American Academy in Rome / Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellowship, the East African Photography Awards, Earth Photo Award by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society; and has guest lectured and paneled at Grain Projects UK and Humanity In Action EU. She teaches at SAIC and her work in academia has also taken the classroom to new and exciting places, with classes in both Chicago and Rio de Janeiro. Irvine, who’s served as chief curator and deputy director for close to ten years, has long stewarded the MoCP; leading the museum through the pandemic and the uncertainties of art-school funding. Yet, in spite of the ups and downs of the last two years, Irvine has consistently turned out beautiful and thought-provoking exhibitions, such as “Shannon Bool: 1:1.” Irvine speaks highly of Bool’s use of the image to challenge histories of colonial and patriarchal violence and this same commitment to a better world can be seen throughout Irvine’s work at MoCP. The exhibition “Native America: In Translation” was organized in concert with Wendy Red Star and Aperture and prioritized the voice and experiences of Native artists. “Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency,” which Irvine co-curated with Kristin Taylor and will be presented at Vassar College, illuminates the state of medical and reproductive care in America. This fall, Irvine organized the first museum show of the artist Dawit L. Ptetros, a retrospective which investigates the legacy of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa. Together Veal and Irvine are charting a new path of what photography can do and be in our city. (Annette LePique)
Lisa Key/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Lisa Key
Richard H. Driehaus Museum
Lisa Key has an extensive resume as an arts administrator working at major museums, including the MCA, the Field Museum, the Art Institute, and in her present role as executive director of the Driehaus Museum. Key’s appointment last August came at an exciting time for the museum known for its stunning gilded-age architecture: The Driehaus’ recent reopening and landmarking of its adjacent Murphy Auditorium nearly doubles the museum’s campus, and their contemporary arts series “A Tale of Today” continues to host exhibitions of artists exploring how history is built in the present moment. “I think art museums can be a place of joy and wonder, and I believe it is because of the people who work to create that for visitors,” Key says. “It’s wonderful to help guide that process as an executive director. It’s really all about people and helping them engage with the museum.” (Frank Geiser)
Vanja V. Malloy/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Vanja V. Malloy
Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago
While only two years into her role as director, Vanja Malloy is bringing a new direction to the Smart Museum, tempered by the well-publicized budget woes affecting the University of Chicago. In the broadest sense, Malloy is pushing the art museum, which will mark its fiftieth anniversary in September with the first of two anniversary exhibitions, into a heightened emphasis on collaboration, both with other arts entities at the university, but also in the truest interdisciplinary sense of connecting outside of the humanities, especially in science. The intersection of science and art have engaged Malloy for a long time; as a Duke undergraduate she majored in art history and in pre-med biology. “I went on to a PhD at the Courtauld in London,” she says, “really looking at the intersection of modern art and science with a focus on Alexander Calder and how his art came about in this era of scientific revolution that was happening with Einstein’s theory of relativity… and how he began to think about really what is our place in this universe and how the universe is really a lot different than we conceived for centuries before. In short, much more dynamic. And so everything is moving and he started to create kinetic sculptures that move because the universe moves. So positioning the art world in the early twentieth century in the larger context of the scientific revolution was my area of focus.” Not surprisingly, she found her home in academic art museums, first at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College before landing as director of the Syracuse University Art Museum before arriving at the Smart. At the Smart she’s had to move quickly to plan the fiftieth, which will include an ambitious fifty events in addition to its two-part exhibition, while also restructuring the museum in the face of budget cuts. And then, in the fall of 2025, the Smart will present Theaster Gates in his first full-fledged museum show in Chicago. All while trying to redefine the role of the academic art museum. “We can’t, we shouldn’t be siloed to just the humanities,” she says. “I think the museum really needs to think more expansively. And we are starting to have partnerships with, for instance, medical humanities with the med school. We’re doing a lot of thinking about AI. We’re starting to have new relationships. And so we’re creating these partnerships with faculty, with research areas, with different institutions, thinking about how the Smart can contribute, but also how the Smart can push boundaries of what a museum does.” (Brian Hieggelke)
Kitty Rauth and Jordan Martins/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Jordan Martins and Kitty Rauth
Comfort Station
Comfort Station is helmed by one of the kindest duos in Chicago’s contemporary art scene: executive director Jordan Martins and artistic director Kitty Rauth. Logan Square’s pluralistic artist-run space was founded in 2011, and has evolved from being volunteer-run toward a formalized model with paid employees. A key achievement in this transformation was bringing on Rauth, who Martins calls a “hand-in-glove fit,” as the first part-time salaried employee in 2022. Rounded-out staffing has allowed the capacity for and offerings of public programming to increase as Martins focuses on fundraising and sustainability, securing both NEA and Terra Foundation funding for the “La Casa de Todos / Everyone’s Home” installation on the public lawn by Edra Soto. Don’t miss the auxiliary event schedule at Comfort Station, where their founding DIY ethos remains intact, as well as their commitment to engaging a wide range of artistic communities. (Erin Toale)
Jennifer Murray/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Jennifer Murray
21c Museum Hotel Chicago
Jennifer Murray took the position of museum manager in January of this year, and feels that this job is a synthesis of all the things she’s done before. She feels strongly that everyone who works in the hotel should think of it as their home, take an interest in the art and feel included. Although the job description was pretty clear, Murray has gone above and beyond, even founding a book fair to be held at 21c November 15-17. She says she is very happy to be working full-time in a job dedicated entirely to art—it’s a luxury she has never had, and she has settled in happily. (Susan Aurinko)
Cynthia Noble/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Cynthia Noble
Art on The Mart
Meet Cynthia Noble, the founding executive director of Art on The Mart—the miracle public art project brought to you through an agreement between Vornado Realty Trust and the City of Chicago. Straddling the vast façade of the Merchandise Mart to present original artistic commissions and nonprofit collaborations, Art on The Mart also proudly stands as the largest permanent digital art platform in the world at the confluence of the Chicago River. Under Noble’s leadership, Art on the Mart has featured internationally renowned artists, including Barbara Kruger and Nick Cave, and is currently unfolding the curatorial vision of Raphael Gygax, its inaugural guest curator, hailing from Switzerland. The next step? Noble has been promoted to executive director of Vornado Realty Trust Arts and will not only continue to direct Art on The Mart but also oversee other arts and cultural initiatives under Vornado, including engaging in this real estate investment trust’s Penn District project in Manhattan—“some of them also digital,” she says. “I am excited to have the opportunity to utilize digital and other art platforms across cities to bring the experience of next-generation public art to all.” (Nicky Ni)
Canice Prendergast/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Canice Prendergast
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Hidden in plain sight in the buildings that comprise its campus across the world, but most prominently in the Harper Center in Hyde Park, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business boasts an art collection of museum quality with about 1,000 works by approximately 250 artists, all on public display during weekday business hours. The force behind the collection is an Irishman, Canice Prendergast, who by day has made a name for himself as an economics professor specializing in the field of market design, which means he’s been involved in worldwide COVID-19 vaccine distribution as well as designing ways to get food to food banks across the country. When the Harper Center was built, a decision was made to create an art collection, and Prendergast was chosen to be its guiding hand, because “I grew up in one of these arty families,” he says, adding wryly, “I always describe myself as the family disappointment who became an economist.” He put together a powerhouse five-person committee: himself; James Rondeau, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago; Susanne Ghez, the retired longtime director and curator of the Renaissance Society; Suzanne Deal Booth, a patron of the arts (and ex-wife of David Booth); and Dean Valentine, a collector based in Los Angeles and co-founder of the Felix Art Fair. This being the University of Chicago, the work is not just art for art’s sake, but also must serve the academic mission of its environment. “It’s meant to be an extension of what we do in the rest of the institution,” Prendergast says.”It’s not meant to be just a thing that looks nice on the wall. We use various ways, mathematics, statistics, language, whatever, to think about problems in the world, and the whole idea behind the collection is that artists are trying to do the same thing, and we should treat it in that way.” Prendergast gives occasional tours to students, which are wildly popular, and has enhanced the collection by also making it a self-guided journey for the curious, using QR codes that lead to details about works and artists. “I think I’ve got like the best gig imaginable,” Prendergast says, “which is somebody pays me to go into a room and think about whatever I want to do. And I get to spend someone else’s money on art and I get to live with it. Like somehow I managed to pull this off.” (Brian Hieggelke)
Mariela Acuña, Aaron Rodgers and Jen Tremblay Chambers/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Aaron Rodgers, Jen Tremblay Chambers and Mariela Acuña
Hyde Park Art Center
Hyde Park Art Center moved in December 2022 to co-executive directorship with the joint promotions of longtime staff members Aaron Rodgers and Jen Tremblay Chambers (who have been at the Center since 2014 and 2009, respectively). Since then, says Rodgers, HPAC has been “firing on all cylinders,” with programs running at capacity, and exhibition visitorship and class enrollment at an all-time high. Community engagement on this unprecedented level is in large part thanks to Open Arts, a program stewarded by Rodgers and Chambers, which makes all of the arts education courses offered by HPAC available on a contribute-what-you-can tuition model (the nation’s first). Another core team member, exhibitions and residency manager Mariela Acuña, oversees the Jackman Goldwasser Residency for national, international and Chicago-based artists at key stages in their career development. Acuña also helped launch the Radicle Curator Residency for a Chicago-based curator engaging pressing civic issues; Dr. Rikki Byrd is the inaugural resident. Operating since 1939, HPAC continues to present ambitious new work and provide opportunities for artists and art enthusiasts, guided by, says Rodgers, “consideration and care in the design, implementation and modification of programs while being grounded in questions about what’s best for Chicago art and Chicago artists.” (Erin Toale)
Myriam Ben Salah and Karsten Lund
The Renaissance Society
Executive director and chief curator Myriam Ben Salah and senior curator Karsten Lund collectively oversee intellectually compelling exhibitions, publications and programs at The Renaissance Society (established in 1915), located on the University of Chicago’s campus. Lund credits their long-term success to their highly collaborative staff and artist-forward approach at the tucked-away space. They use a “high-touch curatorial process that is very nurturing to artists,” while, says Lund, “constantly learning with the work that we’re showing.” As a non-collecting, academia-adjacent institution, “The Ren” (as it is affectionately known) embraces an experimental spirit and provides material support to artists for the production of new work via the commission component of most exhibitions. These stewardship efforts result in content and new scholarship enjoyed in Chicago and appreciated far beyond, as evidenced by MoMA’s recent acquisition of Aria Dean’s film “Abattoir, U.S.A.!,” a 2023 commission. Go on a thinking adventure led by Ben Salah and Lund’s “curatorial curiosity (not authority)” at The Ren this fall with solo exhibitions of Neïl Beloufa and Chicago’s own Isabelle Frances McGuire. (Erin Toale)
Abigail Winograd/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Abigail Winograd
University of Chicago
Abigail Winograd’s work co-curating the U.S. Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale has buoyed her international reputation, but curating the work of Jeffrey Gibson is only one entry in a long list of accomplishments from Winograd’s career of uplifting marginalized voices in art. “I have always been drawn to artists and stories that are innovative, outlying, misunderstood, or underrepresented. I believe that art and artists have a special kind of agency that enables them to shift conversations and thus shape culture and society. I think that kind of power implies a pedagogical responsibility. I don’t know that I have any answers, but I think it is important to propose the questions.” In addition to a multitude of other roles, Winograd also works as the gallery director and chief curator at Pueblo Unido Gallery, a space located within Centro Romero dedicated to championing human rights within the context of refugees and migration. (Frank Geiser)
Justin Witte/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Justin Witte
Cleve Carney Museum of Art
Justin Witte acceded to the post of curator-director at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art (located on the campus of Glen Ellyn’s College of DuPage) in 2015, and since then, he’s produced one knockout show after another, including a 2021 psychological portrait of Frida Kahlo and a 2023 retrospective of Andy Warhol. His self-professed passion for “breaking [things] down for the public in a way that captures people who think they may not be interested” has guided his curation of both illuminating exhibits of permanent collection works and showcases of contemporary innovators like Edra Soto and Alberto Aguilar (for whom a retrospective is currently on view). (Charles Venkatesh Young)
Shanzuo Zhoushi and Dahuang Zhoushi
Zhou B Art Center
The legendary Zhou Brothers need little introduction. The world-renowned painters—whose painting has served as a diplomatic gift between the United States and China—are also the successful cultural entrepreneurs behind one of Bridgeport’s most vibrant art hubs, Zhou B Art Center. Since its founding two decades ago, the Art Center has been providing studio, exhibition and event space for local artists and organizations and witnessing indelible shows, performances and community gatherings. Zhou Brothers’ enterprise continues to expand its influence. After opening an art studio in the dazzling Qianmen district in Beijing in 2015, this June, the grand opening of the Zhou B Art Center Kansas City celebrated the realization of the Art Center’s second location in the United States, an admirable project initiated in 2017 thanks to an invitation from the Missouri Arts Council. Finding a location for the Art Center was serendipitous: “We toured around the city, but it wasn’t until we were on our way to the airport that we saw a building,” remembers Dahuang Zhoushi, alluding to a National Historic building in Kansas City’s Jazz District that used to be the Crispus Attucks School, a historic school for Black children that opened in 1905 but had sat empty for many years, “we felt its potential and we knew then that it was the right choice.” With artists already moving into classroom-converted studios and with fall exhibitions lining up, this is not only an exciting new chapter for Zhou Brothers but also an invaluable new pillar to the art scenes of the Midwest. (Nicky Ni)
Hall of Fame
Zachary Cahill
Director of Programs and Fellowship, Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry
Lisa Corrin
Director, Block Museum, Northwestern University
Janet Dees
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Block Museum, Northwestern University
Natasha Egan
Executive Director, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago
Theaster Gates
Founder/Executive Director, Rebuild Foundation, Artist and Professor, University of Chicago
Madeleine Grynsztejn
Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Sarah Herda
Director, Graham Foundation
Mary Jane Jacob
Director, Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Lisa Yun Lee
Executive Director, National Public Housing Museum
Janine Mileaf
Executive Director, Arts Club of Chicago
Cesáreo Moreno
Chief Curator/Visual Arts Director, National Museum of Mexican Art
Allison Peters Quinn
Director of Exhibitions & Residency, Hyde Park Art Center
James Rondeau
President/Director, Art Institute of Chicago
Lorelei Stewart
Director, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago
Carlos Tortolero
Founder/President Emeritus, National Museum of Mexican Art
Tricia Van Eck
Founder/Artistic Director, 6018North
Avery R Young, Andrew Schachman, Faheem Majeed and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford
Co-Directors, Floating Museum
