David C. Driskell was an American artist, scholar and curator recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art as a distinct field of study. In his lifetime, Driskell was cited as one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of African-American Art. Driskell held the title of Distinguished University Professor of Art Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park. The David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, is named in his honor.
Lowery Stokes Sims is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists such as Wifredo Lam, Fritz Scholder, Romare Bearden, Joyce J. Scott and others. She served on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She has frequently served as a guest curator, lectured internationally and published extensively, and has received many public appointments. Sims was featured in the 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution.
The feminist art movement in the United States began in the early 1970s and sought to promote the study, creation, understanding and promotion of women's art. First-generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, Judith Bernstein, Sheila de Bretteville, Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and many other women. They were part of the Feminist art movement in the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art. The movement spread quickly through museum protests in both New York and Los Angeles, via an early network called W.E.B. that disseminated news of feminist art activities from 1971 to 1973 in a nationally circulated newsletter, and at conferences such as the West Coast Women's Artists Conference held at California Institute of the Arts and the Conference of Women in the Visual Arts, at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C..
Chitra Ganesh is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ganesh's work across media includes: charcoal drawings, digital collages, films, web projects, photographs, and wall murals. Ganesh draws from mythology, literature, and popular culture to reveal feminist and queer narratives from the past and to imagine new visions of the future.
Alanna Heiss is the Founder and Director of Clocktower Productions, a non profit arts organization, online radio station, and program partnership with six cultural institutions in three boroughs in New York. She founded The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc. in 1971, an organization focused on using abandoned and underutilized New York City buildings for art exhibitions and artists' studios, of which P.S.1 was a part. She served as the director of P.S.1 and its later incarnation, the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center from its founding in 1976 until her retirement in 2008. She is recognized as one of the originators of the alternative space movement.
Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network was a New York-based Asian American arts collective and support network established in 1990. Founding members Ken Chu, Bing Lee, Margo Machida, and others established Godzilla in order to facilitate inter-generational and interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration for Asian American artists and art professionals. The collective provided visibility in local and national exhibitions, developed press outreach strategies, published newsletters, and sponsored symposia on Asian American art. It was disbanded in 2001.
Akiko Ichikawa is a transdisciplinary artist, editor, and writer-activist based in New York City. She has written on contemporary art and culture for Flash Art,Art in America, Hyperallergic, and zingmagazine. Ichikawa's article on the photography of Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams at Manzanar became popular in fall 2016, following comments by a spokesperson of a Trump-supporting PAC on Fox News.
Poulomi Desai is a British photographer, multi-media artist, curator and an activist community worker. A self-taught outsider artist originally inspired by a street theatre background, her works are performative, textual, image based, and acoustic - both digital and analog. She works with collaborative working processes which evolve through research, learning and action to examine the elusive, creating live and online large scale photographs, performances and outdoor sound installations.
June Yap is a Singaporean curator, art critic, and writer. She is currently the Director of Curatorial & Collections at the Singapore Art Museum.
Swati Khurana is a writer and contemporary artist of Indian-American origin. She was born in New Delhi, India in 1975. She emigrated to New York in 1977, where she lives and works. She graduated from Poughkeepsie Day School in 1993. She holds a B.A. in history from Columbia University, M.A. in Studio Art and Art Criticism from New York University, and an MFA in creative writing at Hunter College.
Prerana Reddy is a New York-based activist involved with community engagement who works in many different areas and disciplines. Reddy was the Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement at the Queens Museum from 2005–2018, where she organized screenings, performances, discussions, and community-based collaborative programs and exhibits both on and off-site. Reddy has been engaged in the Queens community for many years, and has developed various programs and initiatives for immigrants, youth, non-English speakers, etc. Reddy is involved in the intersection of art and community, having co-curated the exhibition "Fatal Love: South Asian American Contemporary Art Now", as well as coordinated two editions of "Corona Plaza: Center of Everywhere", which commissioned eight artists to develop public art works that engage local residents on issues of neighborhood history and identity as well as tensions around its various transformations. Reddy's involvement in programs that engage communities include the access to language aid, healthcare, public space advocacy, and financial aid. Reddy received the Douglas Redd Fellowship for emerging leaders in the arts and community development sector, funded by the Ford Foundation and administered through Partners for Livable Communities.
The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) is a non-profit arts organization based in New York City. It supports emerging and established South Asian female artists and creative professionals by providing both physical and virtual spaces to showcase their works.
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa is a public non-profit museum in Cape Town, South Africa. Zeitz MOCAA opened on September 22, 2017 as the largest museum of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. The museum is located in the Silo District at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town. A retail and hospitality property, the Waterfront receives around 24 million local and international visitors per year.
Kanisha Raja (1970-2018) was born in Calcutta India, and later lived and worked in New York City.
Leeza Ahmady is an Afghan-born American independent curator, author, arts administrator, dance instructor, and educator; she is known for her work within the genre of Central Asian art. She is the founder of AhmadyArts and Director of Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) since 2006. Ahmady has organized large-scale festivals, exhibitions, artistic collaborations, and experimental forums revolving around contemporary art practices from across all regions of Asia. Ahmady is New York based and was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Shaheen Merali is a Tanzanian writer, curator, critic, and artist. Merali began his artistic practice in the 1980s committing to social, political and personal narratives. As his practice evolved, he focused on functions of a curator, lecturer and critic and has now moved into the sphere of writing. Previously he was a key lecturer at Central Saint Martins School of Art (1995-2003), a visiting lecturer and researcher at the University of Westminster (1997-2003) and the Head of the Department of Exhibition, Film and New Media at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003-2008). A regular speaker on ideas of contemporary exhibition making internationally, in 2018 he was the keynote speaker at the International Art Gallery of the Aga Khan Diamond Jubilee Arts Festival, Lisbon.
Jasmine Wahi is a South Asian American curator, educator, and activist. Her work focuses on issues of femme empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multi-positional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism. In addition to running Project for Empty Space, in Newark, NJ and curating international shows independently, Wahi teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and is currently the Holly Block Social Justice Curator of the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Wahi is a former board member of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC).
Ayana M. Evans is an African-American performance artist and educator based in New York City and an adjunct professor of visual art at Brown University. She also serves as editor-at-large of Cultbytes, an online art publication.
Shervone Neckles is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and community worker. Her work draws inspiration from the duality and transitional nature of her Afro-Grenadian-American identity. Neckles’ practice combines mixed media techniques of printmaking, textiles, book arts, sculpture, installation, and social investigations to further explore concepts of past and present-day colonialism, notions of provenance as it relates to origin, authorship and ownership.
Alexandra Chang is an Asian-American art curator, art historian, and editor. Chang co-founded the peer-reviewed journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas in 2015.
