Since 2017, VIA Art Fund has annually awarded a curatorial fellowship grant to foster ambitious curatorial research and enhance VIA’s grantmaking success. The aim of the award is to support visionary curators by providing discretionary funds for exhibition research, travel, and the general development of the curator’s area of inquiry, while also informing VIA’s grantmaking decisions through an engagement with today’s leading curatorial voices.
Jessica Bell Brown is the Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her recent exhibition projects include How Do We Know The World?, Thaddeus Mosley: Forest, Stephanie Syjuco: Vanishing Point (Overlay), and A Movement In Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration co-organized with the Mississippi Museum of Art. Prior to the BMA she was the Consulting Curator at Gracie Mansion Conservancy in New York, where she curated She Persists: A Century of Women Artists in New York, 1919-2019 with First Lady Chirlane McCray. Previously, she held roles at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Creative Time. Her writing has been featured in several artist monographs and catalogues, including Flash Art, Artforum, Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail.
“In my role as a Curator of International Art (Africa) at Tate Modern in London, I am dedicated to supporting the ever-expanding role of arts and culture in contemporary society. At Tate, I am responsible for helping to expand the museum’s outstanding collection of international modern and contemporary art. As a curator and writer specialising in art from Africa and its global diaspora, I am interested in the multifaceted role of art as a catalyst for alternative cultural, social, and historical narratives.”
-Osei Bonsu
Osei Bonsu is a British-Ghanaian curator and writer based in London and Paris. He is currently a curator of International Art at Tate Modern, where he is responsible for organizing exhibitions, developing the museum’s collection, and broadening the representation of artists from Africa and the African diaspora. As a leading curator of contemporary art, he has advised museums, art fairs and private collections internationally and mentored emerging artists through his digital platform, Creative Africa Network. Bonsu has worked as a contributing editor for Frieze magazine and has contributed to several exhibition catalogues and arts publications including ArtReview, Numero Art and Vogue. Through his writing, Bonsu focuses on the relationship between art and issues of migration, race, and identity in contemporary society. He has lectured widely on these subjects at various institutions including the University of Cambridge, Courtauld Institute of Art, and Royal College of Art among others. Bonsu holds a Masters in History of Art from University College London, and a BA in Curatorial Studies from Central Saint Martins. In 2020, he was named as one of Apollo Magazine’s ‘40 under 40’ leading African voices.
Bonsu’s practice focuses on the relationship between art and issues of migration, race, and identity in contemporary society, as well as Modern and contemporary art from Africa and the diaspora. He is interested in transnational histories of art and connections between art from Africa and other parts of the world. He is a mentee of the late Okwui Enwezor.
“As a curator of modern and contemporary art, I have always tried to ensure that the visitors to any museum I work at feel seen through the exhibitions I curate and the programming I develop. Moreover, I want people to see art as an essential part of their lives, not as a luxury or an option only for the wealthy.”
–Kimberli Gant
Dr. Kimberli Gant has spent the past fifteen years exhibiting and working with artists who create dynamic objects that generate commentary relevant to diverse communities. With VIA’s support, she will continue her curatorial goals of engaging overlooked populations by creating a database of collectors of African diasporic art, focusing on collectors who share that identity. In addition to serving as a personal research tool, this database will also become available to other curators unfamiliar with these collections for future research and access outside their local regions.
Dr. Kimberli Gant is Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She was previously the McKinnon Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA, and has also worked as the Mellon Doctoral Fellow at the Newark Museum, and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA). She has curated numerous exhibitions and gallery reinstallations including the upcoming Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence & the Mbari Club (2022), Journey’s Across the Border: U.S. & Mexico (2021-22), Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Boat People (2021), Brendan Fernandes: Bodily Forms (2020), and John Akomfrah: Tropikos (2019). Gant received her PhD in Art History from the University of Texas Austin (2017), and holds both a MA and BA in Art History from Columbia University (2009) and Pitzer College (2002). Gant has published scholarly work in academic books, such as Anywhere But Here: Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond (2015), art publications such as NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Art Lies and African Arts, and exhibition catalogues for The Newark Museum, The Contemporary Austin, the Studio Museum of Harlem, MoCADA, Paris Photo, and the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos.
Kimberli Gant, Photo courtesy Chrysler Museum.
“I see the role of curator as being one of mediator, mediating between the artist/art and the public. Curating should not happen in a vacuum and the ability to build points of connection with people in the community, through artist studio visits, experiencing art in real life, or attending an art biennial is crucial.”
-Wassan Al-Khudhairi
With a unique ability to mesh the global with local, Wassan Al-Khudhairi’s career has centered on projects that bring visibility to people, stories, and histories that are often overlooked. Since joining CAM in August 2017, she has built a risk-taking contemporary art program centered on audience involvement and engagement with local artists. Al-Khudhairi will use VIA’s fellowship funds to support research travel integral to her curatorial practice.
Wassan Al-Khudhairi is the Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, where she has organized numerous exhibitions including those with Derek Fordjour, Stephanie Syjuco, Bethany Collins, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Guan Xiao, Hayv Kahraman, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and SUPERFLEX. Prior to her position at CAM, Al-Khudhairi was the Hugh Kaul Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art where she organized the first large-scale exhibition of the museum’s contemporary collection, Third Space / shifting conversations about contemporary art. The exhibition’s accompanying publication received the 2019 AAMC Curatorial Award for Excellence. Al-Khudhairi was invited to be a Curator for the 6th Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan in 2017 and Co-Artistic Director for 9th Gwangju Biennial in South Korea in 2012. Serving as the Founding Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, Al-Khudhairi oversaw the opening of the Museum in 2010 and co-curated the first presentation of the museum’s collection Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art and curated Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab. She holds a BA in Art History from Georgia State University and an MA with Distinction from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Photo: Orlando V. Thompson II.
“I have been privileged to work with artists who consistently challenge notions of identity, dominant historical narratives, and aesthetic form; artists who may be asked in other institutions to cement their representation(s) but for whom I need not make those demands.”
-Lumi Tan
Furthering her investigations of the relationship between art and technology, 2020 Curatorial Fellow Lumi Tan plans to use her grant to research the intersections of identity, technology, and the natural environment in East and Southeast Asia. In her role at The Kitchen, Lumi has experimented with interdisciplinary curatorial approaches, working with both emerging and established artists to blur the boundaries of the visual and the performing arts. Her VIA-supported research will allow Lumi to deepen her understanding Asia’s complex role as leader and provider of technological innovations, and the impact of such technologies upon artists with whom she collaborates in New York.
Lumi Tan is Curator at The Kitchen in New York, where she has developed exhibitions of and performances by artists such as Lex Brown, the Racial Imaginary Institute, and Meriem Bennani. Recent exhibitions include Assembly (2019), in which Kevin Beasley explored the institution of the non-profit; Anicka Yi’s confrontation of societal paranoias in the exhibition You Can Call Me F (2016); and the durational performance Danh Vo and Xiu Xiu: Metal (2014). Before joining The Kitchen, Lumi was guest curator at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Nord Pas-de Calais in France, director at Zach Feuer Gallery, and curatorial assistant at MoMA PS1.
Lumi Tan, Photo: Margaret Lee.
“As the telling of art history is discursive and bears some inconsistencies and the occasional myopia, it is my interest to give space through my curatorial practice to artists who have not enjoyed the visibility they are due, given the sometimes-conservative nature of our field.”
-Jamillah James
As the 2019 Curatorial Fellow, Jamillah James will use her grant award to explore emerging artistic and organizing practices taking place beyond major metropolitan areas of the US. James recognizes that smaller arts communities in areas of the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, the North Atlantic, and the American South are largely underrepresented in major institutions. As a curator who has long committed herself to supporting emerging or historically under-recognized artists, James will conduct research that will deepen her knowledge of American Art after 1980.
James is Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). With Margot Norton, she is curating the 2021 edition of the New Museum Triennial. Prior to joining ICA LA in 2016, James was Assistant Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, working in collaboration with the nonprofit Art + Practice. She has held curatorial positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Queens Museum, Flushing, New York; and independently organized many exhibitions, performances, screenings, and public programs at alternative and artist-run spaces throughout the US and Canada.
Recent exhibitions include the first American museum survey of B. Wurtz, and solo presentations of Rafa Esparza, Abigail DeVille, Sarah Cain, Simone Leigh, Michele O’Marah, Alex Da Corte, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. James is currently working on a major exhibition of Nayland Blake; artist projects with Maryam Jafri and Lucas Blalock; and the group exhibition The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies 1970-Present (2020).
Jamillah James, Photo: Paul Sepuya.
“North American curators are usually not permitted the time and translation assistance to know geographically distant artists in their studio and in the context of their communities, a condition that necessarily constrains our understanding of the artists’ practice to what might be seen in an exhibition, fair, biennial, or virtual studio visit.”
-Cathleen Chaffee
Building on her areas of expertise in abstract painting and conceptual art, 2018 Curatorial Fellow Cathleen Chafee intends to use her grant to conduct research into new artistic communities in Lebanon, the UAE, South Africa, Jordan, and Egypt. These trips will allow her to build relationships with a new pool of artists in order to broaden the array of voices with which she works from her home base in upstate NY.
Chaffee is Chief Curator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, where she was previously Senior Curator. Prior to her tenure at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Chaffee was Horace W. Goldsmith Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery, and held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has organized seminal exhibitions such as Joe Bradley’s recent mid-career survey, Shade: Clyfford Still/Mark Bradford (2016), and emerging artist Erin Shirreff’s first large-scale American museum exhibition. Her most recent exhibition, Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective, was the first museum survey of the Buffalo-based artist, musician, and filmmaker.
Chaffee is the recipient of numerous awards including a Fulbright Fellowship. She holds a BA from Ithaca College, an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Cathleen Chaffee, Photo: James Sevigny.
“In Europe and the Americas, we value disruption, innovation, and experimentation; we celebrate the avant-garde as the ideal artists. In Western Africa, art is seen as a mode of transmission of cultural heritage and memory. Thus, many artists aren’t at all interested in endless disruption, but rather creating an affinity with the past and their masters. Realizing this was a revelation and is a lesson I shall keep with me as I continue to travel and show work internationally.”
-Naomi Beckwith
As VIA’s inaugural Curatorial Fellow, Naomi Beckwith used her fellowship monies to attend the 2018 Dakar Biennial, explore the art scene in Lagos, Nigeria, and connect with new colleagues committed to shaping the cultural landscape in West Africa. Beckwith’s research trip to Africa will serve as a resource as she continues to shape a curatorial body of work focused on the resonance of black cultural practices across contemporary art internationally.
Beckwith is the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where she was previously the Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator. She has held positions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the Studio Museum in Harlem and has curated numerous exhibitions including The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now at the ICA Philadelphia and 30 Seconds off an Inch at the Studio Museum. She served on the Jury of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and was a 2017 curatorial fellow with the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York. She holds a BA from Northwestern University, and an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Naomi Beckwith, Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.