The Academy Blog

Mickalene Thomas in conversation with Jerry Saltz

Posted on January 1, 2024

Mickalene Thomas is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. She is known for her elaborate portraits of Black women composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Not only do her masterful mixed-media paintings, photographs, films and installations command space, they occupy eloquently while dissecting the intersecting complexities of black and female identity within the Western canon.

Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Award nominated co-producer, curator, educator and mentor to many emerging artists. Apart from her own monumental solo shows, she simultaneously curates exhibitions at galleries and museums and collaborates with corporations and luxury brands. In addition to an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the New York Academy of Art (2018) and a United States Artists Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow (2015), she is the first Black femme artist to have a scholarship in her name at the Yale School of Art. She has been awarded multiple other prizes and grants, including the Pratt Institute Legends Award (2022); Rema Hort Mann Foundation 25th Anniversary Honoree (2022); Artistic Impact Award, Newark Museum (2022); Glass House 15th Anniversary Artist of the Year (2022); Yale School of Art Presidential Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts (2020); Legend in Residence Award, Bronx Museum (2020); Pauli Murray College Associate Fellow at Yale University (2020); Appraisers Association of America, Award for Excellence in the Arts, (2019); Meyerhoff-Becker Biennial Commission at Baltimore Museum of Art (2019). Thomas is also the Co-Founder of SOULAS House, a cultural hub and retreat for Black women, the Co-Founder of Pratt>FORWARD and founder of Art>FORWARD Artist in the Market incubator for post-graduate students.

Work by Thomas is the collections of numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; International Center of Photography, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles among others. Thomas serves on the Board of the Trustees for the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA PS1.

Photo of Mickalene Thomas: Emil Horowitz

Jerry Saltz is the senior art critic at New York magazine and its entertainment site Vulture, and the author of the New York Times bestseller How to Be an Artist. In 2018 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. A frequent guest lecturer at major universities and museums, he has lectured at Harvard University, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and many others, and has taught at Columbia University, Yale University, the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and elsewhere.

Please RSVP here

 

MFA 2026 Thesis Exhibition

Posted on May 5, 2026

Click here to view the 2026 Thesis Exhibition Catalog

 

Chubb Fellows and Friends Exhibition Panel

Posted on February 10, 2026

Please join us on Wednesday, February 25 at 6:30pm for a panel discussion moderated by curator, Katherine Delony, featuring Chloe Chiasson, and Luján Peréz Hernández. The panel is free and open to the public.

Chubb Fellows and Friends

was made possible with the generous support of Chubb and the Green Family Art Foundation.

 

Katherine Delony is the Director of the Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas, Texas. Delony has a background in collections management, arts education, and curation. She specializes in 18th-century French decorative arts with a focus on textiles and furniture and 21st-century contemporary painting. Delony holds a B.A. in Art History and English and a B.S. in Educational Studies from Southern Methodist University.

 

Chloe Chiasson received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art. While at the NYAA, she concentrated in painting and was awarded the Belle Artes Residency and the Chubb Post-Graduate Fellowship. Chiasson has exhibited internationally in London, Germany, and Hong Kong. A recent recipient of the prestigious Fountainhead Residency, her work has been featured in Artsy, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, Arntet news and New American Paintings.

 

Luján Peréz Hernández has lived in between Spain and the United States since the age of six. Following the completion of her bachelors degree, Perez worked and lived on farmland in Tupelo, Mississippi, creating her own printing press, later attending the Leipzig International Artist Program, and most recently the recipient of the Chubb Fellowship, and The Macedonia Institute Residency in July 2021.
Her work employs a combination of printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpture; exploring the relationship between earth and spirit while tackling the eternally plaguing questions of love, death, rebirth, and belonging.
Peréz presented a solo booth at last year’s Spring Break Art Fair, was included in the New York Times reviewed Future Fairs booth, and was recently presented at salon Acme, Mexico City with Swivel Gallery and featured in “Memory Garden” at Swivel Gallery.

A Financial Roadmap for Artists with Beyond The Studio

Posted on February 9, 2026

Join us for an essential conversation focused on financial empowerment, one of the most crucial yet often overlooked aspects of building a sustainable art career. Moderated by Senior Critic Dexter Wimberly, this event will feature Amanda Adams and Nicole Mueller, hosts of the acclaimed Beyond The Studio podcast, who will share candid insights from their own experiences as working artists.

Amanda and Nicole will present an in-depth discussion about the realities of maintaining an art practice, including transparent conversations about income streams, budgeting strategies, and the financial decisions that shape an artist’s career. Drawing from their extensive experience helping artists navigate the business side of their practice, they’ll provide practical frameworks for thinking about money, sustainability, and long-term career planning.

This is a rare opportunity to hear two established artists speak openly about topics that are often considered taboo in art school settings, but are essential to your success as an artist.

Beyond The Studio co-hosts Nicole Mueller and Amanda Adams met while both attending the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD. They became close friends and roommates while each navigating the start of their own creative careers post-art school. After realizing there was a gap in professional development for artists, and a lack of transparency in the art world, they started the podcast as a way to have honest conversations with artists, makers, and business experts on the business of being an artist, and dive deep into the work that happens “beyond the studio.”

Amanda Adams runs her fiber and illustration brand Close Call Studio full-time from Baltimore, and has been featured at Anthropologie, Etsy, and boutique shops around the country.

 

Nicole Mueller is based in San Francisco, CA where she maintains an active studio practice as a full-time painter and installation artist. Previously, she worked at California College of the Arts as the Assistant Director for Career Development (Fine Arts and Humanities).

https://beyondthe.studio/episodes

 

Dexter Wimberly is an American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions at institutions and galleries around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina; KOKI ARTS in Tokyo, Japan; BODE in Berlin, Germany; Lehmann Maupin in London, U.K.; SECCI in Milan, Italy; and Efie Gallery in Dubai, UAE. His exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times and Artforum, and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, and the founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan.

Keith Timmons Lecture Series: Jennifer Packer in conversation with Clifford Owens

Posted on February 8, 2026

Keith Timmons Lecture Series
Organized by Clifford Owens, Director of Critical Studies, New York Academy of Art
This lecture series is supported by Keith Timmons, a Baltimore-based art collector, to convene Black artists, scholars, curators, and critics at the New York Academy of Art during the 2025 – 2026 academic year.

image credit: Courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins gallery

Jennifer Packer creates portraits, interior scenes, and still lifes that suggest a casual intimacy. Packer views her works as the result of an authentic encounter and exchange. The models for her portraits—commonly friends or family members—are relaxed and seemingly unaware of the artist’s or viewer’s gaze.

Packer’s paintings are rendered in loose line and brush stroke using a limited color palette, often to the extent that her subject merges with or retreats into the background. Suggesting an emotional and psychological depth, her work is enigmatic, avoiding a straightforward reading. “I think about images that resist, that attempt to retain their secrets or maintain their composure, that put you to work,” she explains. “I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.”

Born in 1984 in Philadelphia, Jennifer Packer received her BFA from the Tyler University School of Art at Temple University in 2007, and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. Packer has been recognized with a 2025 Heinz Award for the Arts. She was the 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014-2016.

Her work was most recently featured in two major solo exhibitions: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, the largest survey of Packer’s work to date, presented at Serpentine Galleries, London (2020) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2021-22), and Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2021-22), her first exhibition on the west coast. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Tenderheaded, was presented at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL (2017) and the Rose Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (2018). Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and P.5 – Prospect New Orleans (2021). Packer currently lives and works in New York.

artwork images: Courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins gallery

 

 

image credit: Emmie America

Clifford Owens is an interdisciplinary artist. He makes photographs, performance art, drawings, videos, and texts. His art has appeared in many solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Owens’s solo museum exhibitions include Anthology at MoMA PS1, Better the Rebel You Know at the former Cornerhouse in Manchester, England, and Perspectives 173: Clifford Owens at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. His group exhibitions include Freestyle, Greater New York 2005, and Performance Now: The First Decade of the New Century. Owens’s performance-based projects have been widely presented in museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Owens has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and numerous other fellowships and awards.

Chubb Fellows & Friends

Posted on January 6, 2026

 

A pillar of arts education, the New York Academy of Art has supported generations of figurative artists, fostering lasting connections among students, faculty, visiting critics, and scholars.

 

With the support of Chubb, a world leader in insurance, the Academy presents its highest honor, the Chubb Fellowship, each year to three alumni who have displayed exceptional skill and talent. Looking back to the Academy’s beginnings, this exhibition brings together a group of these Chubb Fellows along with their peers and professors for a retrospective of the decades of artistic brilliance produced by this institution.

 

Over years of collecting, the Green family came to realize—independently and without intention—that many of the artists they were drawn to shared an affiliation with the New York Academy of Art. This pattern became even more striking when they discovered that several had been awarded the Academy’s prestigious Chubb Fellowship. This unexpected convergence revealed a clear throughline: the Academy’s rigorous studio training consistently produced artists whose work deeply resonated with the Foundation’s sensibilities. Chubb Fellows & Friends was conceived to give this alignment public expression.

 

Organized by the Green Family Art Foundation.

Curated by Katherine Delony.

 

This exhibition was made possible with the generous support of Chubb and the Green Family Art Foundation.

 

On Wednesday, February 25 at 6:30pm, we held a panel discussion moderated by Katherine Delony featuring Chloe Chiasson and Luján Pérez Hernández. Click here to watch the panel discussion.

 

 

Chubb Fellows at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025

Posted on November 13, 2025

The Chubb Post-Graduate Fellowship is the highest honor the New York Academy of Art can bestow on its students. Under the program, the Fellows have the opportunity to expand the breadth and depth of their artistic prowess while serving as teaching assistants and mentors to a new crop of talented figurative artists. Chubb Fellows also receive studio accommodations, exhibition opportunities, and a stipend.

 

 

Creative Resilience, Kenturah Davis and Dexter Wimberly In Conversation

Posted on October 2, 2025

Join Senior Critic, Dexter Wimberly in conversation with artist, Kenturah Davis as they explore resilience and perseverance in building a strong artistic career. Davis, who earned her MFA from Yale University School of Art and works between Los Angeles, New Haven, and Accra, Ghana, creates portraiture using text as a point of departure to explore language’s fundamental role in shaping identity. The discussion takes on particular poignancy as Davis lost her Altadena home in the January 2025 Eaton Fire, yet has expressed her determination to rebuild. Through her journey—from creating major public commissions to navigating profound loss—Davis exemplifies the resilience essential to sustaining an artistic practice through both triumph and adversity.

 

Kenturah Davis (b. 1980) lives and works in Altadena, California. The artist earned her BA from Occidental College and MFA from Yale University School of Art.
Recent solo exhibitions include clouds, Stephen Friedman, London, UK
(2024); apropos of air, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2021); (a)Float, (a)Fall, (a)Dance,(a)Death, Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2021); Everything That Cannot Be Known, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art (2020); Kenturah Davis + Desmond Lewis, Crosstown Arts in coordination with Seed Space, Memphis (2019); Blur in the Interest of Precision, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2019).
Recent institutional exhibitions include Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena, California African American Museum (2025), Dark Illumination, Oxy Arts (2023); California Biennial 2022, organized by Elizabeth Armstrong and Essence Harden, Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa (2022); Our House: Selections from MOCA’s Collection, organized by Bennett Simpson and Mia Locks, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2022); Currents and Constellations, curated by Kee Jo Lee, Cleveland Museum of Art (2022); Black American Portraits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (2022).
The Los Angeles Metro Rail commissioned a large-scale, site-specific work by Davis that is now permanently installed on the new Crenshaw/LAX, K Line station. The artist was an inaugural artist fellow at NXTHVN in New Haven (2019), founded by Titus Kaphar and Jonathan Brand and a DAMLI fellow at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2018). Davis was the 2022/23 Wanlass Artist in Residence at Occidental College, and an inaugural cohort for Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab by Theaster Gates and Prada.

 

Dexter Wimberly is an American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions at institutions and galleries around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina; KOKI ARTS in Tokyo, Japan; BODE in Berlin, Germany; Lehmann Maupin in London, U.K.; SECCI in Milan, Italy; and Efie Gallery in Dubai, UAE. His exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times and Artforum, and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, and the founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan.

AXA Art Prize US 2025 Exhibition

Posted on September 25, 2025

 

For complete details on the competition visit axaxl.com/axa-art-prize

 

AXA XL, a division of AXA, developed the AXA Art Prize in partnership with the New York Academy of Art. Over the past eight years, the Prize has become one of the premier student art competitions in the U.S. and is open to figurative paintings, drawings and prints created by undergraduate and graduate art students. Exhibition Jurors included curators from esteemed art institutions and museums such as Crystal Bridges Museum, the Hammer Museum, MoMA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The first prize is awarded $10,000 and the second prize $5,000. This year, winners will be chosen by renowned artists Ali Banisadr, David Antonio Cruz, and Jennifer Schipf from AXA XL. Prize winners will be announced in November, 2025.

2025 Finalists

Women Sculptors: Real Talk

Posted on September 16, 2025

For the past year, a group of accomplished professional women sculptors– Vinnie Bagwell, Meredith Bergmann, Donna Dodson, Nina Levy and Barbara Segal–has been meeting monthly to share insights and challenges in their work and careers. Now they are opening up their conversation to the public in a forum discussion hosted by Nina Levy, the chair of the Sculpture Department of the New York Art Academy. They will discuss everything from navigating historic Central Park commissions and traveling solo museum shows, to harnessing social-media storms and securing celebrity commissions, by taking charge of their careers in today’s art world.

 

 

 

The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie: Documenting a New American Master

Posted on September 16, 2025

Join Evan Goodchild and Alexi Worth in conversation moderated by Christopher Thomas Wood.

Evan Goodchild is a director, editor, and educator driven by a passion for elevating human stories.

He recently directed and edited his debut feature documentary The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie, which is currently playing at select film festivals. The film has won Best Film Audience at Cannes International Film Week Festival and Best Feature Documentary at Boston.Doc festival. Another short film he directed and edited on artists, Nelson Stevens & AfriCOBRA: Art for the People recently screened at the Boston MFA, and was aired at regional PBS and NPR stations.

Evan studied film and audio at Emerson College in Boston, teaches media production in both public school, community and university settings, and produces podcasts for Yale University and the sustainability organization Commons. Other awards include Best Short Film at the Mad in America International Film Festival and a Webby nomination for best branded podcast. Hailing from Springfield, MA, Evan now calls Canton, CT home.
www.goodchild.media

@evangoodchild

 

Christopher Thomas Wood is a writer living in New York. His criticism, fiction and poetry have appeared in The Millions, The Quarterly Conversation and the Whiting Prize-winning website Full Stop, among other publications. He served as writer for the feature art documentary The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie.

 

 

 

Alexi Worth is a painter and writer. He has received awards from the Guggenheim and Tiffany Foundations, and is represented by DC Moore Gallery in New York. Roberta Smith of the NYT praised Worth’s work as representing the continued vitality of painting, wryly labeling it “Realism With Benefits.”

Since the late 1990s, Worth has written about art for The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, and other magazines. In addition, he has written catalog texts for artists such as Carroll Dunham, Jasper Johns, and Jackie Saccoccio. Worth has taught at various MFA programs, including Pratt, MICA, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Yale School of Art.

 

 

Forum Gallery presents an exhibition featuring four decades of painting by Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000).

The exhibition showcases Gillespie’s complex, psychologically charged paintings, propelled by his visual anarchy and consummate skill. The works in the exhibition span the artist’s career from the 1960s, a formative decade when the young artist studied at the American Academy in Rome supported by a Fulbright grant and three Chester Dale fellowships, to the time when Gillespie burst into the national spotlight with a retrospective exhibition at the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1977, and follows the evolution of Gillespie’s art that was presented in more than forty solo museum and gallery exhibitions in the artist’s lifetime. Shown regularly by the Whitney Museum of American Art, in international exhibitions of American contemporary Art, and celebrated with a second, traveling retrospective organized by the Georgia Museum of Art in 1999, Gregory Gillespie’s art is as unique, fresh and compelling today as it was during his lifetime. 

Gregory Gillespie will be on view at Forum Gallery through November 8th.