Angela Two Stars is a public artist and curator. She is the director of All My Relations Arts in Minneapolis, MN. Angela is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and received her BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design. Angela’s professional arts career began at All My Relations Arts gallery as an exhibiting artist, which then led to further opportunities including her first curatorial role for the exhibition titled, Bring Her Home, Stolen Daughters of Turtle Island, a powerful exhibition highlighting the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Mentoring: Josephine Hoffman
Syrus Marcus Ware (Tkaronto, Canada) is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. Syrus’ recent curatorial projects include That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019), Re:Purpose (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2014) and The Church Street Mural Project (Church-Wellesley Village, 2013). Syrus is also co-curator of The Cycle, a two-year disability arts performance initiative of the National Arts Centre. Syrus is a co-curator of Blackness Yes!/Blockorama.
Mentoring: Keda Tadesse
Sadie Woods (Chicago, US) is an award winning post-disciplinary artist, independent curator, and deejay. Her work focuses primarily on social movements, liberatory practices, cultural memory, and producing collaborations within communities of difference. She is the the Co-Founder of The Petty Biennial, Co-Founder and Selenite Arts Advisory, Curatorial & Residency Director of Atlantic Center for the Arts, Curator of COmmunity & Public Programs at Chicago Sinfonietta, and Faculty at the School of the Art Institute.
Mentoring: Eshay Brantley
Mentor Network
Esther Callahan is a practitioner of joy through her work as a facilitator, trainer, community advocate and independent Curator and consultant. With roots in an academic degree in Gender, Women and Sexuality studies and Social Justice Leadership, she is dedicated to interrogating the impact of racial and gender equity. This has been shown in her work as a former Curatorial Fellow at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, (Mia) as the co-founder of the Curatorial Advisory Committee at Mia dedicated to the development of diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility, as the co-leader of the Twin Cities Carrotmob which BUYcotts businesses to take socially-responsible actions towards sustainability, and as an Assistant Editor for the 2019 MN State funded anthology titled Out From The Shadows of Minneapolis: Power, Pride, and Perseverance At A Northern Community College.
Mentored:
2019-20 Fellows Gabby Coll and Adrienne Doyle
Betsy Carpenter is an independent curator, writer, and educator. Currently a lecturer in the Art Department at the University of Minnesota, she previously worked as a curator of visual arts at the Walker Art Center from 2001–2013. Exhibition highlights from her time at the Walker include Frida Kahlo (2007); Robert Irwin: Slant/Light/Volume (2009); Hélio Oiticica/Rirkrit Tiravanija: Contact (2010); and Absentee Landlord (2011), a show she curated with filmmaker John Waters. Prior to the Walker, Carpenter served on the curatorial team responsible for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum exhibition, Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective (1997).
Nicole J. Caruth (she/her) is a cultural strategist and the owner of Hustle Well, a health coaching and consulting practice supporting creatives and changemakers, especially women of color. Before launching Hustle Well, Nicole spent over twenty years cultivating a deep interest in health equity and a commitment to racial justice in her work as a curator, arts writer, and arts administrator. Her writing has been published in ARTnews; C Magazine; Gastronomica; Hyperallergic; Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art; Public Art Review; and Vitamin Green, a Phaidon Press volume. Nicole continues to write about health and contemporary art, and received a 2019 Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Mentored: 2023-23 Fellow Za’Nia Coleman
Taraneh Fazeli (she/her/they) is a chronically ill Iranian-American curator, writer, and cultural organizer. For the first half of her career, she worked at NYC-based arts institutions such as Artforum, e-flux, Triple Canopy, and The New Museum before becoming an independent curator in 2016. Taraneh collaborates with artists and community groups to create exhibitions, publications, and programs supporting exchange across spaces–geographic, disciplinary, institutional, identity-based. Her work is rooted at the intersection of the disability, diasporic, queer, organizing, and creative communities she calls home. She is currently working on a field guide related to her recent peripatetic exhibition “Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying,” which addressed the politics of disability, health, race, and care (2016-20). She teaches at the City College of New York, lectures widely on ableism, time, accessibility, racial equity, and care, and has written for publications including Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Flash Art.
Mentored: 2023-23 Fellow Drew Maude-Griffin
Tia-Simone Gardner is an artist, educator, and Black feminist scholar. Her creative and scholarly practices explore interdisciplinary strategies and engage ideas of ritual, iconoclasm, and geography. She holds a BA in Art and Art History from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and In 2009 she received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Practices and Time-Based Media from the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is currently working on a project on Blackness and the Mississippi River as well as working on a photographic/writing project with her mother about the houses that the women in her family lived in the post-bellum South.
Mentored: 2019-20 Fellow Amirah Ellison
Erin Gleeson (she/they) is a curator and writer, currently Director of FD13 Residency for the Arts, Advisor at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, and Lecturer in the University of Minnesota Art Department. From 2011-2018, Erin was Co-founding Director and Curator of SA SA BASSAC, a non-profit art center in Phnom Penh (2011-2018). They curated Satellite Program 8, Jeu de Paume and CAPC, France (2015-2016), and co-curated the 4th Singapore Biennale (2014). Select talks include with Experimenter Curator’s Hub, Kolkata; Flight from the Empire, Haus der Kulteren der Welt, Berlin; Curatorial Practices in Asia, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, and St Paul St Curatorial Symposium, University of Auckland. Author and editor of numerous exhibition catalogs, recent published writings include with Gwangju Biennale, Sternberg Press, Urban Research (UR), and Art Asia Pacific. Erin holds an MA, Contemporary Art History and Theory of Asia and Africa, SOAS, University of London.
Mentored: 2023-23 Fellow Raíz Symbiotisk
Tricia Heuring is a curator, arts organizer, and educator. Her curatorial practice is balanced between individualized support for emerging artists and building systemic change in the nonprofit arts sector. Tricia is the co-founder of Public Functionary, a multidisciplinary arts and exhibition platform now in its seventh year of programming. Tricia holds a BA from Macalester College and an MA in arts management from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. She teaches arts entrepreneurship and curatorial practice at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota. Currently, Tricia serves as the Board Chair of the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.
Mentored:
2020-21 Fellow Suriya Khuth
2019-20 Fellow Xochi de la Luna
Teréz Iacovino (she/her) is a visual artist, educator, and curator. As both a maker and mentor, this dual perspective guides her curatorial mission to cultivate empathy for, give voice to, and take risks with underrepresented artists. She is the Assistant Curator at the University of Minnesota’s Katherine E. Nash Gallery where she has worked with a variety of artists and organizations including the Estate of Ana Mendieta and Galerie Lelong, the National Council of Education on the Ceramic Arts, and the World of Matter Collective. Iacovino holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota and a BFA from Syracuse University. She is the recipient of a Fall 2021 Curatorial Research Fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and is currently researching the contemporary art of Puerto Rico and its mainland diaspora in collaboration with San Juan-based independent curator José López Serra.
Mentored: 2023-23 Fellow Alondra M Garza
Tim Peterson is an experienced curator and executive director. He is an advocate for artists, contemporary art, equity, access and transparency. He received a Master’s degree in the History of Art from Williams College, and a Bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College. He has served as Chief Curator for the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Museum of Art, founding director/curator of Franklin Art Works (Minneapolis), and Assistant Curator and Program Officer for Lannan Foundation (Los Angeles) along with independent work. Notable exhibitions include Nari Ward: So Called, Linear Abstraction and Jack Leigh: Full Circle (SCAD Museum of Art) and over 130 solo exhibitions at Franklin Art Works, including premiers by Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Shinique Smith, Ghada Amer, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Rob Fischer, Nicola López, Megan Vossler, Wardell Milan, Uta Barth, Dawit L. Petros, and Kehinde Wiley.
Mentored:
2020-21 Fellow Juleana Enright
Casey Riley is Curator and Head of Photography and New Media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), where she oversees the research, exhibition, and preservation of nearly 14,000 works of art. A specialist in the history of photography as well as American visual and material culture, she is the author or co-author of several publications concerning photographic archives, women’s history, and the history of collecting. Prior to her appointment at Mia, she served as Assistant Curator at the Boston Athenaeum and a consulting curator for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a BA in the History of Art from Yale University, an MA in English from Middlebury College, an MAT from Brown University, and a PhD in American Studies from Boston University.
Mentored:
2020-21 Fellow Kehayr Brown-Ransaw
Keisha Williams is the Curatorial Department Assistant and Artist Liaison in Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia). She holds an MA in Visual Arts Management and Curating (2017) and an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies (2015). She is co-curator of the 2019 “Mapping Black Identities” and “Mapping Black Identities: 3 Films” exhibitions and founder of the Curatorial Advisory Committee at Mia. Keisha is a contributing author to the publication “Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity and Critical Event Studies” (Routledge, 2019). She believes that everyone has a vital voice in the curatorial process and that it is important to examine and dismantle historical power dynamics and embrace co-curation.
Michelle Westmark Wingard (she/her) is a curator, installation-based photographer, and arts educator. She is Professor of Art and Gallery Director of Bethel University’s two exhibition spaces. In her fourteen years of programming exhibitions, Westmark Wingard has worked with more than eighty artists in a diverse range of media. Her curatorial projects often seek to create experiential and participatory opportunities exploring themes of memory, memorial, perception, and interconnection. Previously, she was Assistant to the Gallery Director in Pratt Institute’s Department of Exhibitions and she had the opportunity to work with Creative Time and A.I.R. Gallery. Westmark Wingard holds an MFA in photography from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn (2006).
Mentored:
2020-21 Fellow Starasea Nidiala Camara
2019-20 Fellow Alexandra Buffalohead
Photograph by Clarke Sanders