Participants from CCL Class of 2019

Endia Beal

Endia Beal

Director

Endia Beal is a North Carolina-based artist, educator, and activist who is internationally known for her photographic narratives and video testimonies that examine the personal, yet contemporary stories of women of color working within the corporate space. Beal currently serves as the Director of Diggs Gallery and Assistant Professor of Art at Winston-Salem State University.

Beal is featured in several online editorials including The New York Times, NBC, BET, the Huffington Post, Slate Magazine, and National Geographic. She also appeared in Essence Magazine, Marie Claire Magazine South Africa, Newsweek Japan, and Photo District News. Her work was exhibited in several institutions such as the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC; the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture based in Charlotte, NC; and the Aperture Foundation of New York.

Beal currently serves on the Board for Reynolda House Museum of American Art, the Public Art Committee for Piedmont Triad International Airport, and the Public Art Committee for the City of Winston-Salem, NC.

David Breslin

David Breslin

Director of Curatorial Initiatives

David Breslin is the DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Prior to joining the Whitney, Breslin was the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas. Previously, he was associate director, Research and Academic Program, and associate curator of contemporary projects at the Clark Art Institute.

At the Whitney, Breslin has curated or co- curated Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900-1960An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017and David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night. He also has organized exhibitions including El Anatsui and Raw Color: The Circles of David Smith at the Clark and The Precarious and The Condition of Being Here: The Drawings of Jasper Johns at the Menil Collection. He has written essays on the work of, among others, Felix Gonzalez- Torres, Valentin Carron, Jenny Holzer, Cady Noland, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Thek.

Breslin earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Amherst College, a master’s in art history from Williams College, and a Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University.

Johanna Burton

Johanna Burton

Maurice Marciano Director

Johanna Burton is Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Prior to joining the Center, she held leadership positions in curatorial and educational departments at the New Museum, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program, and was a CCL (Center for Curatorial Leadership) Fellow in 2019. Burton has curated exhibitions including Sherrie Levine: Mayhem at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011); Haim Steinbach: once again the world is flat at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2013); Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); and, at the New Museum in New York XFR STN (2013), Cheryl Donegan: Scenes and Commercials (2016), Simone Leigh: The Waiting Room (2016), A.K. Burns: Shabby but Thriving (2017), and Trigger: Gender As A Tool And A Weapon (2017), among other projects. 

She is the editor of Cindy Sherman (October Files, MIT Press, 2006); and, as the series editor for The Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture (co-published by The New Museum and MIT Press), oversaw volumes including Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century (edited by Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter, 2015); Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good (edited by Johanna Burton, Shannon Jackson, and Dominic Willsdon, 2016); Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, 2017); and Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (edited by C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp, 2020). 

Dennis Carr

Dennis Carr

Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art

Dennis Carr is the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Previously, he was the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture in Art of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 2010, he was a co-curator of the MFA’s 53-gallery Art of the Americas Wing, which reoriented American art with a hemispheric focus, and he has led efforts within the department to expand the collections of American, Latin American, Ancient American, and Native American art. His recent exhibitions include Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia (2015), Collecting Stories: Native American Art (2018), and Cecilia Vicuña: Quipu Desaparecido (2018), and he contributed to Art and Industry in Early America (2016), which won the Charles F. Montgomery Book Prize. He holds graduate degrees from Yale University in the History of Art and from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. Prior to joining the MFA in 2007, Carr served in the departments of American Paintings and Sculpture and American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. Carr is currently at work on Royal Houses of the Eagle: Aztec and Habsburg Empires, which explores the notion of collecting from a cross-cultural perspective in the sixteenth century.

Susan Cross

Susan Cross

Curator of Visual Arts

Susan Cross is Senior Curator of Visual Arts at MASS MoCA, where she has organized major exhibitions, commissions, and performances by Alex Da Corte, Liz Deschenes, Spencer Finch, Katharina Grosse, Allison Janae Hamilton (co-curated with Larry Ossei-Mensah), Steffani Jemison, Guillaume Leblon, Liz Glynn, Richard Nonas, and Simon Starling, among others. She recently curated solo exhibitions of artists Cauleen Smith and Marcos Ramiírez (ERRE) and is currently working with South African sculptor Ledelle Moe and Puerto Rico-based artist Gamaliel Rodriguez. Group exhibitions include The Lure of the Dark: Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night (2018), In the Abstract (2017), The Dying of the Light: Film as Medium and Metaphor(2014), Invisible Cities (2012), and The Workers (2011), co-curated with Carla Herrera-Prats. Cross edited the first monographs on Da Corte, Crowner, Finch, and Glynn and is the co-editor of Sol LeWitt: 100 Views. Previously, she was a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. She has been a visiting lecturer in the art department at Williams College and serves on the board of the Williamstown Art Conservation Center and on the advisory board of the Journal of the Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. She received an MA from Williams College. 

Ryan N. Dennis

Ryan N. Dennis

Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives

Ryan N. Dennis currently serves as the as the Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Previousely, she was the Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) at the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA). Most recently, Dennis co-curated, with Jessica Bell Brown, the critically acclaimed exhibition, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, currently on view at Brooklyn Museum and traveling nationwide through 2024. Her recent projects include Leonardo Drew’s City in the Garden (2020), Betye Saar: Call & Response (2021), Dusti Bonge: Piercing the Inner Wall (2021) and organizing CAPE artist-in-residence Shani Peter’s Collective Care for Black Mothers and Caretakers (2022) with the local Jackson community. Before joining MMA, she served as the Curator and Programs Director at Project Row Houses (PRH) in Houston, where she worked with over 100 BIPOC artists to exhibit their work in PRH’s shotgun houses. She led the creation of the 2:2:2 Exchange Residency Program with the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago and established Project/Site, a temporary, site-specific, commission-based public art program. In 2017, she launched the PRH Fellowship with the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. Dennis earned her Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute, focusing on Curatorial Practice. Her writings have appeared in online and print catalogs, journals, and international publications. She has been a visiting lecturer and critic at numerous art schools and institutions and has taught courses on community-based practices and contemporary art at the University of Houston. Dennis was a Class of 2019 Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership, a program that offers leadership training to art museum curators. Recently she was the co-curator of the 2021 Texas Biennial, A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon (2021), and the guest art editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.

Susanne Ebbinghaus

Susanne Ebbinghaus

George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art and Head, Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art

Susanne Ebbinghaus is the George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art at the Harvard Art Museums. Serving also as head of the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art, she oversees general curatorial matters in the areas of ancient, Asian, and Islamic art. She organized the exhibitions Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings (2018–19) and Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity (2007–08), and was deeply involved in the reinstallation of the museums’ collections galleries following an extensive renovation and expansion. Her publications include a special journal issue on painted sculpture and a collection of essays on the scientific and art historical study of ancient bronzes. At Harvard, she also teaches courses in ancient Greek art and archaeology and is engaged in the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis (Turkey). After studying at the University of Freiburg, Germany, she received her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in classical archaeology from Oxford University. Since then, her research has been supported by fellowships from the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Bard Graduate Center.

Tuliza Fleming

Tuliza Fleming

Curator of American Art

Tuliza Fleming is the Curator of American Art at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). She played a critical role in building the Museum’s art collection, served as lead curator for the inaugural exhibition Visual Art and the American Experience (2016), curated Clementine Hunter: Life on Melrose Plantation (2018), and co-curated Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment (2010). Prior to her current position, she was the Associate Curator of American Art at the Dayton Art Institute where she organized exhibitions such as The Glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Monet and the Age of American Impressionism.

Fleming received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Maryland. Her publications include “Visual Art and the American Experience: Creating an Art Gallery in a History and Culture Museum,” Art and Public History: Approaches, Opportunities, and Challenges; “Cover Stories: The Fusion of Art and Literature During the Harlem Renaissance,” Dream a World Anew: The African American Experience and The Shaping of America; “The Convergence of Aesthetics, Politics and Culture: Jeff Donaldson’s Wives of Shango,” AfriCOBRA: Philosophy; and Breaking Racial Barriers: African American Portraits in the Harmon Foundation Collection.

Sara Krajewski

Sara Krajewski

Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Sara Krajewski is the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Portland Art Museum. Appointed in 2015, Krajewski has expanded the contemporary art program through exhibitions, performances, commissions, collection development, and publications, and she has fostered collaborations that bring together artists, curators, educators, and the public to ask questions around access, equity, and new institutional models. Recent exhibition projects include: Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal...; Hito Steyerl: This is the Future; We.Construct.Marvels.Between.Monuments.; Josh Kline: Freedom; and Placing the Golden Spike: Landscapes of the Anthropocene. From 2012–2015, Krajewski was the Director of INOVA (Institute of Visual Arts) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she curated an array of interdisciplinary exhibitions and performances. Her prior positions include curatorial roles at the Henry Art Gallery, the Harvard Art Museum and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Krajewski was awarded a curatorial research fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and received arts leadership training through the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries and the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She holds degrees in Art History from the University of Wisconsin and Williams College.

Courtney J Martin

Courtney J Martin

Director

In 2019, Courtney J. Martin became the sixth director of the Yale Center for British Art. Previously, she was the deputy director and chief curator at the Dia Art Foundation; an assistant professor in the History of Art and Architecture department at Brown University; an assistant professor in the History of Art department at Vander­bilt University; a chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow in the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley; a fellow at the Getty Research Institute; and a Henry Moore Institute research fellow. She also worked in the media, arts, and culture unit of the Ford Foundation in New York. In 2015, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

In 2012, Martin curated the exhibition Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip . . . Frank Bowling’s Poured Paintings 1973–1978 at Tate Britain. In 2014, she co-curated the group show Minimal Baroque: Post-Minimalism and Contemporary Art at Rønnebæksholm in Denmark. From 2008 to 2015, she co-led a research project on the Anglo-American art critic Lawrence Alloway at the Getty Research Institute and was co-editor of Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator (Getty Publications, 2015, winner of the 2016 Historians of British Art Book Award). In 2015, she curated an exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation focused on the American painter Robert Ryman. At Dia, she also oversaw exhibitions of works by Dan Flavin, Sam Gilliam, Blinky Palermo, Dorothea Rockburne, Keith Sonnier, and Andy Warhol. She was editor of the book Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art (Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2016), surveying an important collection of modern and contemporary work by artists of African descent.

She received a bachelor of arts from Oberlin College and a doctorate from Yale University for her research on twentieth-century British art and is the author of essays on Rasheed Araeen, Kader Attia, Rina Banerjee, Frank Bowling, Lara Favaretto, Sam Gilliam, Leslie Hewitt, Asger Jorn, Wangechi Mutu, Ed Ruscha, and Yinka Shonibare CBE (RA).

She was a participant in the Center for Curatorial Leadership’s fellowship in 2019.

René Morales

René Morales

Director of Curatorial Initiatives and Chief Curator

René Morales is Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami, where he has organized over 50 exhibitions. Recent curatorial projects at PAMM include Meleko Mokgosi: Your Trip to Africa; Christo and Jeanne- Claude: Surrounded Islands, 1980–83; Dara Friedman: Perfect Stranger; Sarah Oppenheimer: S-281913; Marjetica Potrc: The School of the Forest; Bik Van der Pol: Speechless; Monika Sosnowska: Market; and Amelia Peláez: The Craft of Modernity. Morales is currently working on a major career survey of the work of Gary Simmons. Morales has spearheaded numerous major acquisitions for PAMM’s permanent collection, including a set of nearly 400 works from the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, as well as over 50 works purchased through PAMM’s Collectors Council. He has written essays for various publications, including Cabinet and numerous exhibition catalogues. Morales is currently teaching Museum History and Theory/Curatorial Practices at Florida International University. Prior to joining PAMM (formerly Miami Art Museum), Morales worked at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, where he co-organized Island Nations: New Art from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, among other exhibitions. Morales, who grew up in Miami, received his BA from Swarthmore College and his MA in Art History from Brown University.

Sarah Kelly Oehler

Sarah Kelly Oehler

Field-McCormick Chair and Curator of American Art, Department of American Art

Sarah Kelly Oehler is the Field-McCormick Chair and Curator of American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has been since 2002 in increasing positions of responsibility. Her most recent exhibition was Charles White: A Retrospective, the first major retrospective of this influential African American artist. Other projects include Whistler’s Mother: An American Icon Returns to Chicago (2017), America After the Fall:Painting in the 1930s (2016), Shatter Rupture Break: The Modern Series (2015), and They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration (2013). She has contributed to numerous other publications at the museum, including Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine (2013) and American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago from World War I to 1955 (2009).

Oehler is currently Chair of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Curatorial Forum and is a past Chair of the Association of Historians of American Art. She received her Ph.D. in American Art from Columbia University and her B.A. in History from Yale University.