CCL Fellowship Participants

Marina Reyes Franco is the Curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC). Her recent exhibitions include Tropical is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime, at Americas Society, MAC, and Mead Museum; El momento del yagrumo, at MAC; Resisting Paradise, at Pública, San Juan, and Fonderie Darling, Montreal; Watch Your Step / Mind Your Head, at ifa-Galerie Berlin; and La 2da Gran Bienal Tropical in Loíza. At MAC, she has led the commissioning of works inside and outside the museum by Daniel Lind Ramos (co-curated with Marianne Ramírez Aponte), Ad Minoliti, Tony Cruz Pabón, Eliazar Ortiz Roa, Julianny Ariza, and La Vaughn Belle. She has also contributed to the expansion of the museum’s collection through acquisitions of pieces by Esvin Alarcón Lam, Natalia Ortega, Dave Smith, Ricardo Cabret, Sofia Gallisá Muriente, Michael D. Linares, and Gwladys Gambie, among others.

In 2010, alongside Gala Berger, she co-founded the La Ene project in Buenos Aires, which she directed until 2014. As curator and researcher, she has focused on Esteban Valdés’ work, artistic and literary manifestations bordering on political action, and the impact of tourism on Caribbean cultural production.

Kevin Tervala is the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). In this role, Kevin works with the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, Dr. Asma Naeem, to advance the museum’s artistic program and oversees the work of the institution’s 20-person curatorial team, as well its conservators, registrars, librarians, archivists, and image service specialists. A historian of African art and architecture, Kevin arrived at the BMA in 2015 as a Curatorial Fellow and, in 2017, was promoted to Associate Curator of African Art and Department Head of the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Islands (AAAPI). Between 2017 and 2023, Kevin curated nine exhibitions of historic African and Oceanic art, spearheaded the expansion and reinstallation of AAAPI’s collection galleries, overhauled the museum’s gallery dedicated to art from the ancient Mediterranean world, and chaired the BMA’s Cultural Property Working Group, which was responsible for the reconceptualization of the museum’s cultural property policies and practices.

Kevin received a PhD and MA from Harvard University and a BA from the University of Maryland. He has taught African studies and art history at Georgetown University, Hunter College, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland.

Charles Aubin is co-director of the Centre Pompidou Jersey City, the French museum’s only branch in the US. Previously, Aubin served as Senior Curator & Head of Publications at Performa, where he commissioned and produced new performances, publications, and programs featuring a wide range of artists, architects, and choreographers, including Nairy Baghramian, Jérôme Bel, Julien Creuzet, François Dallegret, Madeline Hollander, Tarik Kiswanson, Yvonne Rainer, Franz Erhard Walther, Mabel O. Wilson, and Haegue Yang. In 2019, Aubin coedited "Bodybuilding: Architecture and Performance," the first book to survey the use of live performance by architects. Between 2015 and 2018 he also served as curator for the inaugural program of Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, where he co-organized the last major exhibition of Lutz Bacher and founded the annual dance festival "Échelle Humaine." At the helm of the Centre Pompidou Jersey City, Aubin rejoins the institution that gave him his first curatorial position between 2006 and 2010. Aubin received his Master of Humanities in 2006 from Sciences Po (Paris) and pursued graduate studies in Historical & Critical Studies at the Royal College of Art (London). His writing has appeared in Artforum, ArtPress, Critique d’art, and Frieze.

Makeda Best is the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Oakland Museum of California, where she oversees the Curatorial, Collections and Production departments. Formerly a curator and head of the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums, her exhibitions included Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s Americaand Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970. She also conceived of Reframe, an initiative to reimagine collecting and curatorial projects through wider historical interpretations, and perspectives of equity, and transparency. The catalogue for Devour the Landwas awarded 2022 Photography Catalogue of the Year by Aperture/Paris Photo. Best has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues, journals and scholarly publications. She is the author of Elevate the Masses: Alexander Gardner, Photography and Democracy in 19th Century Americaand co-editor of Conflict and Identity in American Art. In addition to serving on many juries, panels, and advisory teams, she is a co-founder and current board 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 MFA from CalArts and PhD from Harvard University.

Aimé Iglesias Lukin is the Director and Chief Curator of Art at Americas Society in New York. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, she lives in New York since 2011. Since joining the organization in 2019, she has led a program of exhibitions, publications, and programs aiming to rethink the Americas beyond political cartographies and to highlight the value of the local among the global. Her two-part exhibition and book “This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York 1965–1975,” was based on her Ph.D. dissertation at Rutgers University. She also organized the exhibition “El Dorado: Myths of Golds”, and solo shows on Bispo do Rosario, Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Geles Cabrera, Terence Gower, and Feliciano Centurión. She completed her M.A. at The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and her undergraduate studies in art history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She curated exhibitions independently in museums and cultural centers and previously worked in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, and Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires.

Dr. Katherine Larson is Curator of Ancient Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, where she oversees the permanent collection of global glass from antiquity to the year 1250. Her exhibition projects include Dig Deeper: Discovering an Ancient Glass Workshop, Past|Present: Expanding the Stories of Glass, Fire and Vine: The Story of Glass and Wine, and permanent gallery installations of early glass from eastern Asia and colonial-era glass manufacture and trade in West Africa. At Corning, she leads or serves on interdepartmental committees on collections management and online collection systems, legacy scientific research collections, and exhibition, interpretive, and program planning.

Larson researches and publishes extensively on ancient and historical glass and serves as co-editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Glass Studies. She is active in the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) as co-chair of the DEI Committee and member of the Program Committee. Trained as an archaeologist with field experience in Israel, Greece, Turkey, and Italy, Larson holds a PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan, an MA from the University of Minnesota, and a BA from Macalester College.

Nora Lawrence (she/her) is the Artistic Director and Chief Curator of Storm King Art Center, leading its curatorial program and providing vision and guidance for the artistic functions of the institution. Lawrence has played an integral role in raising the museum’s profile—seeing the Art Center’s audience grow four-fold and working with artists to realize ambitious works while also bringing in a new generation of artists.

Lawrence recently co-curated Lookout, a site-specific commission by Martin Puryear. She led Storm King’s 2021 commission of Sarah Sze’s Fallen Sky. Lawrence has curated exhibitions with several artists, including Mark Dion, Rashid Johnson, and Wangechi Mutu. She established Storm King’s annual Outlooks program, which invites one emerging or mid-career artist to realize a temporary, site-specific work, and co-founded the Shandaken: Storm King artist residency. Lawrence has authored and co-authored several publications, including a monograph on Lynda Benglis.

Prior to Storm King, Lawrence worked in curatorial departments at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. She holds a BA from Pomona College, an MA from the University of Southern California, and an M.Phil. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Victoria Isabel Lyall is the Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator, Art of the Ancient Americas at the Denver Art Museum. Her exhibitions and publications focus on themes of translation, narrativity, and the continued resonance of Ancient American art for contemporary artists. She has curated or co-curated numerous projects including most recently, Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche and ReVisión: Art in the Americas. In 2021 she redesigned Denver’s Ancient Americas galleries. Prior to joining the Denver Art Museum, Lyall held positions at San Francisco State University and LACMA, where she served for ten years. Her publications include Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche (2022 ALAA Thoma Award for Exhibition Catalogue), ReVisión: A New Look at Art in the Americas, Murals of the Americas, Children of the Plumed Serpent: The Legacy of Quetzalcoatl, and the forthcoming El Mar Caribe: An American Mediterranean.

Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Lyall grew up in Miami. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from UCLA, an M.A. from Tulane University, and a B.A. in Anthropology and History of Art from Yale University.

Oluremi C. Onabanjo is The Peter Schub Curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, where she is co-chair of the Early Modern Working Group and deeply involved in the ongoing reinstallation program of the Museum's collection. Onabanjo is the 2022 recipient of the Cisneros Institute Curatorial Research Grant and a core member of the C-MAP Africa Research Group. Recent exhibitions include Projects: Ming Smith(2023) and New Photography 2023(2023). Previously, Onabanjo worked as Director of Exhibitions and Collections of The Walther Collection and served on the curatorial team of the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg. She lectures internationally on photography and curatorial practice, and her writing appears in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, Revista ZUM, Tate Etc alongside publications by The Art Institute of Chicago, RISD Museum, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, amongst others. A 2020 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grantee, Onabanjo is the author of Ming Smith: Invisible Man, Somewhere Everywhere (2023) and the editor of Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos(2022). She is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, and holds an MSc in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology from Oxford University.

Caroline Shields is the Curator of European Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto. She joined the AGO in 2017 as Assistant Curator and has led the European Art department since 2019. In this role she has prioritized exhibitions, installations, and acquisitions that expand the narrative of European art told in the galleries to illustrate more inclusive histories. Her exhibition "Cassatt—McNicoll: Impressionists Between Worlds" (2023) brought together American Mary Cassatt and Canadian Helen McNicoll, both of whom established their artistic careers in Europe. Previous exhibitions include "Impressionism in the Age of Industry" (2019) and co-curated permanent collection installations include "Belmore | Bernini" (2019), "Carl Beam: The Columbus Suite" (2022), and "Naudline Pierre: Written in the Sky" (2023), which featured a co-acquisition with the AGO’s Global Africa and the Diaspora department. She has also co-curated two reinstallations of the European art permanent collection in 2017 and 2022. A specialist in nineteenth-century European art, Shields earned a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Prior to her start at the AGO she held curatorial roles at the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Megan Steinman is an non-profit builder and curator, who currently serves as Executive Director of Denniston Hill, a residency founded by artists Julie Mehretu, Paul Pfeiffer, and Lawrence Chua. From 2015-2020, Megan served as the founding Director of The Underground Museum (The UM) in Los Angeles, guiding the museum’s storied transformation from artists Noah and Karon Davis' storefront vision to a world-renowned contemporary art center locally anchored by civic engagement. During its existence, The UM fostered deep, lasting relationships with its neighborhood and remains a model for how a museum can become an integral member of the communities it serves. Megan's curatorial projects occur in museums and public spheres around the world, including Spago Beverly Hills, Dolby Gallery, Museo Pecci Milano, Sonos Studio, Santa Monica Museum of Art, District Berlin, and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. In 2023, she launches a new exhibition at the Tom Bradley West terminal of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Megan holds a Master of Public Art Studies from the University of Southern California. She is a co-founder of the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) coalition, a group of 35 organizations working together to fortify their sector of the city’s art scene.

Susanna V. Temkin is Curator at El Museo del Barrio, and holds a PhD. degree from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. At El Museo she has curated or co-organized such exhibition as DOMESTICANX (2022); Estamos Bien: La Trienal 20/21; and the museum’s fiftieth anniversary show, Culture and the People (2019). With Rodrigo Moura and Lee Sessions, she is the co-curator of the current exhibition, Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección, the museum’s most ambitious permanent collections exhibition in nearly two decades. Prior to El Museo, she served as Assistant Curator at Americas Society in New York, as well as the research and archive specialist at the Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., where she assisted in co-authoring the digital catalogue raisonné of artist Joaquín Torres-García. Temkin has published essays and reviews in the Rutgers Art Review, Burlington Magazine, and Hemispheres; Alice Neel: People Come First (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) ; and authored the chronology of Concrete Cuba: Cuba Geometric Abstraction from the 1950s, produced by David Zwirner Books.