CCL Selects PhD Students for Fifth Annual Seminar in Curatorial Practice

The Center for Curatorial Leadership to Convene its 2018 CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice

This July, the Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) will welcome fifteen art history doctoral students to New York City for the CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice. This fifth iteration of the program will bring together a cohort from universities around the country for a two-week intensive on museums and object-based study, offering a robust picture of curatorial practice and its range of issues and responsibilities.  

Since 2014 and with the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CCL has provided advanced graduate students with the tools and knowledge to pursue professional opportunities in museums. To date, more than half of past Seminar participants who have completed their doctoral work have assumed full-time curatorial positions in museums across the country.

The 2018 cohort was selected by a committee of senior curators and Seminar alumni who evaluated an exceptional pool of applicants. The students in this year’s class come from one dozen American universities and are engaging a breadth of art historical specialties that expand traditional academic divisions. The cohort spans ancient to contemporary areas of study and reflects a diversity of scholarly emphases, ranging from medieval Japanese calligraphy and Islamic textiles to colonial Indian and Sri Lankan photography and contemporary Indigenous performance.

The students reflect a deep commitment to object-based research and demonstrate an interest in scholarly, responsive, and socially-engaged approaches to curatorial practice. The Seminar builds on the students’ backgrounds through a dynamic schedule comprised of meetings with leaders in the field, visits to collections and exhibitions, conversations beyond curatorial departments, and discussions with foundation heads, philanthropists, and trustees. The program also features individual mentorship with a museum curator and a team-based practicum examining the mission and program of a local museum.  Over the two weeks, the Seminar provides a rich understanding of the current issues, challenges, and opportunities that shape cultural institutions and curatorial programs.

For more information about the participants, click here.

 

The students, listed alphabetically, are:

 

– Alisa Chiles, University of Pennsylvania
Modern Architecture and Decorative Arts

– J. English Cook, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Architecture and Cinema

– Ashley Dimmig, University of Michigan
Islamic Art

– Xiaohan Du, Columbia University
East Asian Art

– Christopher Green, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Modern Native American Art

– Leila Harris, The Graduate Center, CUNY
History of Photography

– Diana Mellon, Columbia University
Medieval and Renaissance Italian Art

– Jun Nakamura, University of Michigan
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Printmaking

– Galina Olmsted, University of Delaware
Nineteenth-Century European Art

– Rachel Patt, Emory University
Roman Art

– Chloé Madeleine Pelletier, University of Chicago
Early Modern European Art

– Anni Pullagura, Brown University
Modern and Contemporary Art

– Xuxa Rodríguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latinx and Latin American Art

– Miranda Saylor, University of California, Los Angeles
Viceregal Mexican and Early Modern Spanish Art

– Marina Tyquiengco, University of Pittsburgh
Contemporary Indigenous Art

Documents

2018 Seminar Students Press Release (download)