NYFA Individual Consultations for Visual Artists

The NYFA Individual Consultations for Visual Artists was in partnership with NYFA Learning and No Longer Empty (NLE). The program took place in May 2012. NLE partnered with the Bronx community and expanded the audience for contemporary art through the exhibition This Side of Paradise, which came out of a commission from the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council to turn the Andrew Freedman Home into a community arts center.

As part of NLE’s comprehensive programming for this exhibition, NYFA offered these consultations, which were open to Bronx visual artists and artists residing in other boroughs. They provided artists with practical and professional advice from arts professionals who have extensive experience in supporting artists in the visual arts. Professionals provided artists with expert feedback on activities such as how to develop a project, put together a portfolio, find resources, and research spaces in which to exhibit or perform.

Consultants:
Rocío Aranda-Alvarado is Curator at El Museo del Barrio where she is currently working on the exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World and the accompanying permanent collection exhibition for 2012. Most recently, she was a co-curator for El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 2011. Her curatorial work and research focuses on modern and contemporary art of the Americas. She is the former curator of Jersey City Museum, where she organized significant retrospective exhibitions of the work of Chakaia Booker (2004) and Raphael Montañez Ortiz (2006) and group shows on various themes including Tropicalisms: Subversions of Paradise (2006), The Superfly Effect (2004), and The Feminine Mystique (2007). Ms. Aranda-Alvarado is also on the adjunct faculty of the Art Department at the City College of New York. Her writing has appeared in various publications including catalogue essays for the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Art Nexus, Review, the journal of the Americas Society, NYFA Quarterly, Small Axe, BOMB and American Art.

Shannon Brunette received her MFA at the School of Visual Arts in 2006. Currently, she is exploring a new body of work relating to cultural exchange opportunities, from Alaska video artist-in-residence focusing on climate change to a 5-week international fellowship in exchange with the traditional craftspeople of Orissa, India. Beyond her own film/video work she has curated and produced several multimedia events featuring performing, visual and media artists. Ms. Brunette is Senior Program Manager of Lambent Foundation, which focuses on innovative grantmaking and programs that explore the intersections between art, culture, creativity and justice. She is a founding member of the 21st Century Women’s Salon – promoting professional networking and personal growth among women interested in progressive causes. Ms. Brunette also serves on the advisory board of Artists on the Brink, which raises funds and awareness for various social causes through artistic collaborations. She has lived in Brooklyn, NY since 1998 and previously has worked at The Guggenheim Museum – Learning Through Art and Blue Man Productions.

Raquel de Anda is an independent curator who currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Her projects focus on collaboration based programming that cross-pollinates ideas and connects contemporary art to local community. From 2003-2010 Raquel was the Associate Curator at Galería de la Raza, a contemporary Latino arts organization founded in 1970. Recent events and exhibitions include Roots and Visions, a project of the Prospect. 1 Biennial Education Department; Strategies for the Shift, a panel series which examined the political shift in Latin America via the critical lens of the artist; ChicaChic: A New Wave of Chicana Art; The ReMuseum, a temporary public art project for the 5x5 project, Washington, D.C. and Ripple Effect: Current of Socially Engaged Art at the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC. Raquel has also juried several panels for organizations including The San Francisco Arts Commission and The National Performance Network.

Gabriel de Guzman is Assistant Curator of Visual Arts at Wave Hill, where he organizes the Sunroom Project Space series for New York-area emerging artists and coordinates thematic group exhibitions in Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery. Prior to joining Wave Hill’s staff in 2010, he was Neubauer Family Foundation Curatorial Assistant at The Jewish Museum, where he served as coordinator for the exhibitions Houdini: Art and Magic (2010), Susan Hiller: The J. Street Project (2008), Warhol's Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered (2008), and Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider (2003), as well as career-spanning surveys of the work of Louise Nevelson (2007) and Joan Snyder (2005). Mr. de Guzman contributed an entry on Larry Rivers’ Portrait of Vera List, c. 1965, in Masterworks of The Jewish Museum (2004), as well as chronologies and biographical texts in the catalogues for Houdini, Warhol’s Jews, Louise Nevelson, and Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider. Mr. de Guzman earned an M.A. in art history from Hunter College, City University of New York, and a B.A. in art history from the University of Virginia.

Christine Licata is a New York based Independent Curator, Art Writer and Creative Director. From 2008 – 2011 she was the Associate Curator at Taller Boricua Galleries in Spanish Harlem and has curated with other alternative, experimental art spaces such as AC Institute and Art for Change's 2010 Hacia Afuera arts festival. Currently she is part of the curatorial team for Art in Odd Places' performance art festival AIOP 2012: MODEL and is a contributing writer for Artlog. Her writing has also been published in numerous artist catalogs as well as in Art on Paper and Degree Critical. She has a BFA from Parson School of Design and an MA in Art Criticism and Writing from the School of Visual Arts.

Abbe Schriber is a Curatorial Assistant at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Among her research interests are the histories of photography and performance, public art and urban space, feminist theory and practice, and the intersections of art and political activism. Schriber has written for publications including The Brooklyn Rail, artcritical.com, and BOMBlog (forthcoming). She has worked in the curatorial departments of institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, where she researched and archived Fluxus objects from the Gilbert & Lila Silverman Collection. She received a BA in Art History from Oberlin College, where she co-curated the exhibitions ‘To Make Things Visible’: Art in the Shadow of World War I, and Envisioning Edo’s Splendor: ‘The Floating World’ and Beyond.

Questions

If you have any questions, please email the Immigrant Artist Project at i.outreach@nyfa.org or call 212-366-6900 x249.