CCL Fellowship Participants

Rehema C. Barber is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA), where she amplifies women and BIPOC voices in Modern and Contemporary Art. Since joining the KIA in 2019, her curatorial projects have included the reinstallation of its permanent collection, and the exhibitions A Story to Finding Us: Kyungmi Shin (2024); A Bridge Between Two Worlds: Works by Wu Jian’an (2023); Africa Imagined: Reflections on Modern & Contemporary Art (2022); Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century (co-curator, 2022); and Todd Gray: Crossing the Waters of Space, Time, and History (2021).

Previously, Barber held positions at the Tarble Arts Center, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Memphis, and the Amistad Center at the Wadsworth Atheneum. She has participated in the Art Writing Workshop (AICA-USA), the Getty Leadership Institute, NYU’s Jewish Art Institute, the ICI Curatorial Forum, the Japan Foundation’s Curatorial Exchange Program, and the Saint Louis Art Museum’s Romare Bearden Fellowship.

Barber’s writing has appeared in the Shape of Abstraction and Unmasking Masculinity exhibition catalogues, and Fiber Arts, International Review of African American Art, and the Routledge Reader Series. She holds a B.A. in Art History, with honors, from Roosevelt University and an M.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dr. Mounia Chekhab-Abudaya is Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Doha, Qatar. At MIA, she has led the Curatorial team during the revamping of the museum’s permanent galleries (2015-2022) and has both curated and co-curated 11 exhibitions including Hajj – The Journey through Art (2013) in collaboration with the British Museum; Building Our Collection: Ceramics of Al Andalus (2014); Qajar Women (2015); Imperial Threads: Motifs and Artisans from Turkey, Iran and India (2017); Baghdad: Eye’s Delight (2022); and Splendours of the Atlas (2024).

Dr. Chekhab-Abudaya previously worked with the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre Museum, Paris and taught Islamic Art for undergraduate and graduate students at the Pantheon Sorbonne and the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO). She completed her Ph.D. in Islamic Art History and Archaeology at the Pantheon Sorbonne University in Paris, specializing in the Western Mediterranean, manuscripts, and pilgrimage-related devotional materials in the Islamic world. With a great interest in languages, Dr. Chekhab-Abudaya holds a degree in Literal Arabic from INALCO.

Kim Conaty is the Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she oversees the curatorial, publications, and conservation departments. As a member of the Whitney’s senior leadership team, Conaty is responsible for the scholarly and artistic program as well as the development of the Museum’s collection.

Prior to her current role, Conaty served as the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Whitney, where she co-directed the institution’s first Collection Strategic Plan and organized several exhibitions including Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard (2024); Ruth Asawa Through Line (2023), with the Menil Collection; Edward Hopper’s New York (2022); Nothing Is So Humble: Prints from Everyday Objects (2020); and Mary Corse: A Survey in Light (2018).

Previously, Conaty was Curator at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Massachusetts and Assistant Curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and Clark Fellowship, Conaty earned her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, MA from Williams College, and BA from Middlebury College.

Francesca Du Brock is the Chief Curator at the Anchorage Museum. Her curatorial practice is informed by her background as an artist and educator and is grounded in social engagement, place-based storytelling, environmental justice, and experimental museum practice. Du Brock’s recent exhibitions have focused on thematic topics of care, climate, representation, Northern feminisms, vernacular culture, and immigration, and include Dog Show (2025); How to Survive (2023); Black Lives in Alaska: Journey, Justice Joy (2021); Extra Tough: Women of the North (2020); and What, Why How We Eat (2018). In 2020, she established the Museum’s Virtual Artist Residency program, which continues to provide unrestricted support to artists, sharing process and behind-the-scenes insights into their lives and practices.

Du Brock is the editor of How to Survive: Care and the Climate Crisis (Hirmer, 2025), and has published articles and interviews in Exhibition journal, Craft Quarterly, Smithsonian Folklife Magazine, and the Anchorage Museum’s Chattermarks journal. Born and raised in Alaska on Dena’ina Ełnena, she holds a BA in Art History from Bowdoin College, an MFA from the San Francisco Arts Institute, and an M.Ed from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Courtney Gilbert is the Assistant Director & Curator at the Sun Valley Museum of Art (SVMoA), where she began working as Curator in 2006. During her time at SVMoA, she has curated more than sixty exhibitions and has worked on commissioned projects with artists including Tanya Aguiñiga, Carolina Caycedo, Tiffany Chung, Binh Danh, John Grade, Ana María Hernando, Allan McCollum, James Prosek, Mel Ziegler, and many others. Recent exhibition highlights include Intertwined: Weaving in Community(2024); Sightings (2023); Dams: Reservoirs, Reclamation, Renewal (2022); Deeds Not Words: Women Working for Change (2021); and Mirage: Energy, Water, and Creativity in the Great Basin(2019).

Previously, Gilbert worked in the Latin American Department at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, where she served as editor for Blanton Museum of Art: Latin American Collection (2006) and coordinated planning for The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art (2007). She earned her BA from Dartmouth College and MA and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, where she was awarded a USIA Fulbright-García Robles Fellowship for dissertation research in Mexico.

Healoha Johnston is the Director of Cultural Resources and Curator for Hawaiʻi and Pacific Arts and Culture at the Bishop Museum. Johnston’s research and exhibitions explore connections between historic visual culture and contemporary art, with a particular focus on the sociopolitical underpinnings that inform those relationships. Since joining the Bishop Museum in 2022, her practice has centered on the design and implementation of Pacific Pipeline, an international initiative rooted in rematriation. Her curated exhibitions include Hoʻoulu Hawaiʻi: The King Kalākaua Era (2018–2019), for which the accompanying exhibition catalog received multiple awards including the 2019 Samuel M. Kamakau Book of the Year Award from the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association; and Lisa Reihana: Emissarie (2019); an exhibition that for the first time brought together the groundbreaking video iPOV [infected]and telescope installation with the complete set of French nineteenth-century wallpapers that Reihana critically recast.

Previously, Johnston was the Chief Curator and Curator of the Arts of Hawaiʻi, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas at the Honolulu Museum of Art and Curator for Asian Pacific American Women’s Cultural History at the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Johnston holds graduate degrees in Art History and in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawai‘i.

Shalini Le Gall is Chief Curator and Susan Donnell and Harry W. Konkel Curator of European Art at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, where she leads the curatorial, collections, and education departments. In this capacity, Le Gall has led the reinstallation of the American art galleries with a multivocal advisory group, organized the exhibitions Surrealist Play (2022); Elizabeth Colomba: Mythologies (2023); and Painting Energy: The Alex Katz Foundation Collection at the Portland Museum of Art (2025).

Previously, Le Gall served as the Linde Family Foundation Curator of Academic Programs at the Colby College Museum of Art, where she built relationships with students andfaculty through workshops and classes, and co-curated Inside Out: The Prints of Mary Cassatt (2020) and River Works: Whistler and the Industrial Thames (2019). For over a decade, she has worked in museums in both educational and curatorial capacities, thinking equally about how to engage supporters and visitors and build exhibitions and collections in ways that expand audiences. Le Gall received her B.A. from Georgetown University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern University, with a focus on postcolonial studies and nineteenth-century painting.

Margot Norton is Chief Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), where she leads the curatorial team and oversees the exhibition program. At BAMPFA she curated MATRIX 283/Gabriel Chaile: No hay nada que destruya el corazón como la pobreza(2023); To Exalt the Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection (2025); and the BAMPFA presentation of Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection (2025).

Norton was previously Allen and Lola Goldring Senior Curator at the New Museum, New York, where she curated over forty exhibitions including recent solo shows with Carmen Argote, Diedrick Brackens, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Wangechi Mutu, Pepón Osorio, Mika Rottenberg, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, and the 2021 New Museum Triennial: Soft Water Hard Stone. In 2017, she curated the Sequences Real Time Art Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the Georgian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale with artist Anna K.E. She regularly contributes to exhibition catalogues and publications and is also co-founder and current editorial council member of Museums Moving Forward, an independent, limited-life organization devoted to envisioning and creating a more just museum sector by 2030. She holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University.

María Elena Ortiz is the Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth where she recently curated Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible (2023) and Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940 (2024). She was curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), where she founded the Caribbean Cultural Institute, curated several exhibitions, and worked to grow the museum’s collection. In 2024, Ortiz co-curated with Susanna V. Temkin and Rodrigo Moura, Flow States, El Museo del Barrio’s triennial dedicated to Latinx art. In 2023, she co-curated with Marina Reyes Franco, Puerto Rico NegrXsat the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. Her traveling exhibitions have been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, the Warhol Museum of Art, the DePaul Museum, and the Tarbel Arts Center. In 2011, Ortiz was curator at La Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City.

Ortiz is a public speaker for many art institutions, and her writing appears in publications by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, Frist Art Museum in Nashville, the Denver Art Museum, the KMAC Contemporary Art Museum in Louisville, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Lux Center for the Arts in San Diego, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Matadero in Madrid, the Sala de Arte Público Siquieros, and the Brooklyn Rail, among others.

Erica P. Jones is the Senior Curator of African Arts and Manager of Curatorial Affairs at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Her curatorial work has engaged themes such as the legacy of colonialism in Africa, historical royal arts, and resonances between Africa and its diasporas. Exhibitions she has curated or co-curated include: The House Was Too Small: Yoruba Sacred Arts from Africa and Beyond (2023); Inheritance: Recent Video Art from Africa (2019); On Display in the Walled City: The Nigerian Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition 1924-1925 (2019); and Meleko Mokgosi: Bread, Butter, and Power(2018).

Jones is on the board of African Arts Journal, serves as a co-chair of the steering committeef or the Collaboration, Collections, and Restitution Best Practices Working Group, and in 2024 led the Fowler Museum’s repatriation of seven looted objects to the Asante Kingdom in Ghana. Her publishing has been concentrated on colonial-era collecting, provenance, and the arts and museums of the Cameroon Grassfields. Jones holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.A. in art history and anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.

David Pullins is the Jayne Wrightsman Curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art where he is responsible for French, Italian, and Spanish paintings from 1600 to 1800. Recent projects at The Met include Juan de Pareja: Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velázquez (2023), co-curated with Arturo Schomburg scholar Vanessa K. Valdés; Iba N’Diaye: Between Latitude and Longitude(2025), co-curated with Alisa LaGamma for the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing; and Look Again: European Paintings, 1300-1800 (2024), a reinstallation of some 700 works of art from the permanent collection over forty-five renovated galleries.

From 2017-2019 Pullins was assistant curator of French painting at The Frick Collection and from 2016-2017 visiting lecturer at MIT. He studied art history at Columbia University (BA ‘05), the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA ‘06), and Harvard University (PhD ‘16) during which time he was the David E. Finley Fellow (2012-2015) at the Center for Advanced Studies (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. His latest monograph, The Mobile Image from Watteau to Boucher, was published in 2024 by the Getty Research Institute.

Pavel Pyś is the Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy at the Walker Art Center. At the Walker, he has curated solo exhibitions by Daniel Buren, Paul Chan, Pan Daijing, Michaela Eichwald, Christine Sun Kim, Carolyn Lazard, Ralph Lemon & Kevin Beasley, Sarah Michelson, and Elizabeth Price, as well as the group exhibition The Body Electric (2019). In 2018, he was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship which aided research towards Multiple Realities: Experimental Art from the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-80s, presented at the Walker, Phoenix Art Museum and Vancouver Art Gallery. Pyś is closely involved in leading the strategic vision, development, and long-range planning of the Walker’s collection.

Between 2011 and 2015, he was the Exhibitions & Displays Curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. In 2011, he was the recipient of the Zabludowicz Collection Curatorial Open and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo curatorial residency. He has published essays on artists including Trisha Baga, Carol Bove, Michael Dean, John Latham, Wilhelm Sasnal, Alina Szapocznikow, and Hague Yang. Pyś received an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College in 2010 and an MSc in Culture & Society from the London School of Economics in 2009.