PUBLIC PANEL DISCUSSION:
Artist Residencies Today
Join us for an engaging conversation on the evolution and wide variety of artist in residence programs today during New Wave Art Wknd 2021.
PARTICIPANT BIOS:
Sarah Gavlak: In 2005, Sarah Gavlak opened the first contemporary art gallery in Palm Beach after recognizing a lack of local gallery presence there. She founded her eponymous gallery with the goal of championing female and LGTBQ artists. Over the last 14 years, she has staged highly conceptual and pioneering exhibitions, which include early solo presentations by Marilyn Minter, Betty Tompkins, Simone Leigh, and Wade Guyton. In 2014, she expanded her footprint and opened a 5,000 square foot space in Hollywood, and recently took on representation for artists Gisela Colon, Beverly Fishman, Candida Alvarez, and Vanessa German.
Thelma Golden: Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual art by artists of African descent. Golden began her career as a Studio Museum intern in 1987. In 1988, she joined the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she launched her influential curatorial practice. Over a decade at the Whitney, she organized numerous groundbreaking exhibitions, including Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in American Art, in 1994. She was also a member of the curatorial team for the 1993 Biennial.
Golden holds a B.A. in Art History and African American Studies from Smith College. She has received honorary doctorates from the City College of New York (2009), San Francisco Art Institute (2008), Smith College (2004), and Moore College of Art and Design (2003). In 2010, she was awarded a Barnard Medal of Distinction from Barnard College. That same year, President Barack Obama appointed Golden to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, on which she served from 2010–2016. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Barack Obama Foundation and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She is a 2008 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and in 2016 received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. In 2015, she was appointed as a Ford Foundation Art of Change Visiting Fellow. Golden is a recognized authority in contemporary art by artists of African descent and an active lecturer and panelist speaking about contemporary art and culture at national and international institutions. Her 2009 TED Talk, “How Art Gives Shape to Cultural Change,” examines how contemporary artists continue to shape dialogue about race, culture, and community.
Rachel Gustafson: Rachel Gustafson is the Director of Curatorial Operations and Research. She has worked on an array of Norton-originated exhibitions since joining the Norton Museum of Art in 2015, including The Body Says, I Am a Fiesta: The Figure in Latin American Art (2020) and Oldenburg and van Bruggen: The Typewriter Eraser, A Favored Form (2019) which also became a publication. Before joining the Norton, Gustafson was a fellow at the National Museum for Women in the Arts where she helped coordinate Total Art: Contemporary Video (2014). In 2013, she worked in the publications department of the National Endowments for the Arts, authoring several articles for its national magazine. Gustafson received her MA in Art History from American University where she graduated with distinction in 2014, and published her thesis, Face to Face: A Comparative Study of Identity and Self-Portraiture in the Work of Cindy Sherman and Nikki S. Lee. She received her BA degree from Florida State University in 2007.
Joiri Minaya: Joiri Minaya (b. 1990) is a Dominican-United Statesian multi-disciplinary artist whose works destabilize historic and contemporary representations of an imagined tropical identity. Born in New York, she grew up in the Dominican Republic, graduating from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales of Santo Domingo (2009), Altos de Chavón School of Design (2011) and Parsons the New School for Design (2013).
Minaya has participated in numerous residencies such as Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Guttenberg Arts, Smack Mellon, BronxArtSpace, Bronx Museum AIM Program, the NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, Transmedia Lab at MA Scène Nationale, Red Bull House of Art Detroit, Lower East Side Printshop, Art Omi and Vermont Studio Center.
Minaya has exhibited internationally across the Caribbean and the U.S. She is a recipient of an Artadia grant, a Nancy Graves Foundation Grant, a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grants, Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship, the Great Prize of the XXV Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimenes, and the Great Prize of the XXVII Biennial at the Museo de Arte Moderno (D.R).
Helen Toomer: Helen Toomer is Co-founder of Stoneleaf Retreat, an artists’ residency and connective space in the Catskill Mountains, which is focused on supporting womxn and families. She is also the Founder of Upstate Art Weekend and the Co-founder of Art Mamas Alliance.
Formerly, Toomer was Executive Director of Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) and Director of the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair, Collective Design Fair, and PULSE Contemporary Art Fairs. She also co-founded and managed a contemporary art gallery, toomer labzda, in New York.
Toomer lectures on art fairs and professional development at universities and arts organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom, and was an adjunct professor at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She serves on the Board of AIRIE and Advisory Committees for ProjectArt, Foundwork, The Dorsky Museum and the Baxter St Camera Club of New York. She graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Arts Institute of Bournemouth, England.