The Academy Blog

Doron Langberg in conversation with Dexter Wimberly from New York Academy of Art on Vimeo.

Doron Langberg (b. 1985, Yokneam, Israel) lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from Yale University and holds a BFA from UPenn and a Certificate from PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). Langberg has attended the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, Yaddo artist residency, and the Queer Art Mentorship Program and is currently at the EFA Studio Program . His work was shown at the LSU museum, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Leslei Lohman Museum, The PAFA Museum, Perrotin Gallery, Yossi Milo Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and several university art galleries. Langberg’s work was reviewed in Art in America, Frieze Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Artsy, ArtCritical, and GAYLETTER, and it is in the collection of the PAFA and RISD Museum.

Dexter Wimberly is an entrepreneur and independent curator who has organized exhibitions and developed programs with galleries and institutions throughout the world including The Third Line, Dubai; Koki Arts, Tokyo; Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh; and the Museum of Arts and Design, NYC. His exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications including The New York Times, Artforum, and Hyperallergic; and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Wimberly has served on the board of the New York-based arts nonprofit, The Laundromat Project and actively supports other arts organizations. Prior to developing his curatorial practice, Wimberly was the founder and CEO of the pioneering marketing and public relations agency, August Bishop. Wimberly has also served as Director of Communications for The Museum for African Art, NY; Director of Strategic Planning at Independent Curators International, NY; and Executive Director of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ. In 2018, he founded the professional development company, ART WORLD CONFERENCE, and serves as its CEO.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn in conversation with Dexter Wimberly from New York Academy of Art on Vimeo.

Photo: Kyle Dorosz. Courtesy the artist.

Each of us is a cacophony of experience. Not just a seamless self.
—Nathaniel Mary Quinn

In his collage-like composite portraits derived from sources both personal and found, Nathaniel Mary Quinn probes the relationship between visual memory and perception. Fragments of images taken from online sources, fashion magazines, and family photographs come together to form hybrid faces and figures that are at once neo-Dada and adamantly realist, evoking the intimacy and intensity of a face-to-face encounter.

Quinn’s passion for drawing began at a young age, while he was growing up on the South Side of Chicago. In ninth grade, he received a scholarship to attend Culver Academies boarding school in Indiana—but a month after arriving at the school, Quinn received news from his father that his mother had suddenly passed away. He returned to Chicago for Thanksgiving the following month, only to find that the rest of his family—his father and brothers—had abandoned his childhood home without a trace. This jarring experience further propelled Quinn’s art, and he decided to commit himself to his education, adding his mother’s name, Mary, to his name so that she would appear on all of his degrees. He received a BA in art and psychology from Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 2000, and an MFA from New York University in 2002.

After completing his MFA, Quinn moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he continued to paint while working as a teacher for at-risk youth. In 2013 he had a breakthrough, developing a new technique that would draw wide attention to his work. The mother of one of his students invited Quinn to show five works in an art salon that she was hosting in her home. On the day of the opening, however, he only had four works finished. Improvising, he began to paint a blurred memory of his past, piecing together fragments of images from his subconscious. When he stepped back, he recognized the mouth of his brother Charles.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Miss Chairs, 2014.
Charcoal, gouache, oil-pastel, and oil-paint on Coventry Vellum paper, 50 x 43 ½ inches (127 x 110.5 cm)
© Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Jennie Lamensdorf is an arts worker based in San Francisco, CA. Her work focuses on expanding audiences for the art of our time by bringing challenging and engaging work to non-traditional exhibition spaces because art has the power to encourage thoughtfulness, empathy, and creative problem solving.

Lamensdorf is the Bay Area Lead of the global Facebook Art Department. The program includes the Artist in Residence (FB AIR), Analog Research Lab (ARL), and Creative Engagement programs, which have a collective mission to encourage creativity, innovation, openness, and connectivity through art and design. Facebook’s Art Department also presents public-facing programs and supports projects that bring together diverse communities in real life and encourage the exploration of creative and critical thinking.

From 2012 – 2019, Lamensdorf was Director and Curator of Time Equities Inc. Art-in-Buildings. She is also an independent curator and writer; her most recent project, Hot Spots: Radioactivity and the Landscape, opened at the University of Buffalo Art Galleries in 2018 and traveled to the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois.

In 2016, Lamensdorf co-founded Forward Union, a coalition-building initiative connecting social justice organizations with artists and creative communities.

Lamensdorf is a Trustee of the San José Museum of Art and a Board Member of Art Omi in Ghent, NY. She received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a MA in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dexter Wimberly is an entrepreneur and independent curator who has organized exhibitions and developed programs with galleries and institutions throughout the world including The Third Line, Dubai; Koki Arts, Tokyo; Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh; and the Museum of Arts and Design, NYC. His exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications including The New York Times, Artforum, and Hyperallergic; and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Wimberly has served on the board of the New York-based arts nonprofit, The Laundromat Project and actively supports other arts organizations. Prior to developing his curatorial practice, Wimberly was the founder and CEO of the pioneering marketing and public relations agency, August Bishop. Wimberly has also served as Director of Communications for The Museum for African Art, NY; Director of Strategic Planning at Independent Curators International, NY; and Executive Director of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ. In 2018, he founded the professional development company, ART WORLD CONFERENCE, and serves as its CEO.

Amanda Jurist is a board-certified Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) who specializes in child, adolescent, family and adult psychotherapy. For the past 15 years, she has worked with children and families in a variety of capacities as an educator, advocate and behavioral modification specialist. Amanda has leveraged these experiences and, over the past four years, has further developed and employed her expertise as a psychotherapist at The Denham Group. In this time, one thing has remained constant in all of her work – her heart and passion for helping people.

If you or a member of your family are experiencing difficulty in school, on the job, or in your relationships and are unsure why, it may be time to seek help from a trained mental health professional. Amanda has a strong belief in early intervention; she believes that the earlier a problem is identified and addressed, the greater are chances of healthy exploration and lasting recovery.

In her practice, she recognizes that each circumstance is unique and makes every effort to understand all aspects of one’s life in order to deliver a highly personalized treatment plan that maximizes our chances for success. Amanda works in a collaborative manner to emphasize self-discovery and acceptance as a way to enhance attunement.

She specializes in the delivery of psychodynamic psychotherapy. However, multiple modalities are interwoven in her work based on the needs of the client.

Monks’s paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including “Intimacy” at the Kunst Museum in Ahlen, Germany and “Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009” at the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts, New York. Her work is represented in public and private collections, including the Savannah College of Arts, the Somerset Art Association and the collections of Howard Tullman, Danielle Steele and Eric Fischl.

“My intention is to transfer the intimacy and vulnerability of my human experience into a painted surface. I like mine to be as intimate as possible, each brush stroke like a fossil, recording every gesture and decision.”

Alyssa Monks earned her B.A. from Boston College and she studied painting at Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence. She went on to complete her M.F.A at the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art in 2001. She teaches and lectures at universities and institution nationwide. Alyssa has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for Painting three times and serves on the New York Academy of Art’s Board of Trustees. She is represented by Forum Gallery in New York City. Alyssa currently lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York.