The Academy Blog

Julia Halperin is an arts and culture journalist, editor, and cofounder of the Burns Halperin Report, the largest report of its kind tracking equity and representation in the art world.

Her writing has appeared in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Financial Times. From 2017 to 2022, she was executive editor of Artnet News. Before that, she served as museums editor of The Art Newspaper and news editor of Art + Auction magazine.

Victoria Rogers is a creative business strategist living in New York. From advising nonprofits to serving on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum and Creative Time, she juggles many commitments in her life and is using the universal language of art to open up the dialogue around diversity and inclusion.

Join us for our first in-person Conversation with the Critics in 4 years! This dynamic discussion about art, culture, and community will be moderated by New York Academy of Art Senior Critic, Dexter Wimberly.

Danny Báez
Head of Arts at Kickstarter

A Dominican-born, NYC-based cultural producer and organizer. Director and founder of REGULARNORMAL gallery, one-half of the founding duo behind Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic’s premier art fair, MECA, co-founder and board member of ARTNOIR, a member of the Young Council of El Museo del Barrio, a Board Member of ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program) and New Art Dealers Alliance. Danny is currently the Head of Arts at Kickstarter; he firmly believes in the power of building and practicing upon the community and has organized various exhibitions in New York since 2010.

Alexis Lowry
Curator, Dia Art Foundation, New York 

Alexis Lowry is responsible for commissions, exhibitions, public programs, and the permanent collection across Dia’s sites and locations. As a curator and scholar with particular interests in Minimalism, Postminimalism, and Land art, Lowry has been instrumental in the stewardship of Dia’s sited artworks, and expanding the institution’s approach to and understanding of land-based practices. 

Her recent exhibitions include presentations of Larry Bell, Mel Bochner, John Chamberlain, Mary Corse, Melvin Edwards, Dan Flavin, Charles Gaines, Barry Le Va, Robert Morris, Charlotte Posenenske, Dorothea Rockburne, Michelle Stuart, Anne Truitt, Lee Ufan, and Lawrence Weiner, as well as new commissions by Lucy Raven, Rita McBride, and Kishio Suga. While at Dia she has played a key role in significantly expanding the museum’s collection through considerations of gender, geography, race, and intergenerational exchange. 

Prior to joining Dia, she was curator of the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University and a freelance project manager for Creative Time, New York. She publishes regularly on Modern and Contemporary art. Recent editorial projects include Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress and a forthcoming monograph on Delcy Morelos. In 2021, Lowry was the first invited curator-in-residence at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany. She is on the board of directors of the Triple Aught Foundation and the Subcommittee for Public Art at Brown University. Lowry leaves Dia in October to join Hauser & Wirth as Curatorial Director.

Kimberli Gant
Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Kimberli Gant is the Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. She was previously the McKinnon Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA, and has also worked as the Mellon Doctoral Fellow at the Newark Museum, and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA).

She has curated numerous exhibitions and gallery reinstallations including the Brooklyn Museum’s iteration of A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, as well as Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence & the Mbari Club (2022), Journey’s Across the Border: U.S. & Mexico (2021-22), Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Boat People (2021), Brendan Fernandes: Bodily Forms (2020), and John Akomfrah: Tropikos (2019). Gant received her PhD in Art History from the University of Texas Austin (2017), and holds both a MA and BA in Art History from Columbia University (2009) and Pitzer College (2002).

Gant has published scholarly work  in academic books, such as Anywhere But Here: Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond (2015), art publications such as NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Art Lies and African Arts, and exhibition catalogues for The Newark Museum, The Contemporary Austin, the Studio Museum of Harlem, MoCADA, Paris Photo, and the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos.

Rasu Jilani
Executive Director, Brooklyn Arts Council

Rasu Jilani is an accomplished cultural strategist and social sculptor with a wealth of experience in curating, producing, arts administration, arts advocate, and recently appointed Executive Director of the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). As leader of BAC, Rasu leads efforts to support and empower local artists toward achieving the Council’s vision of generating a self-sustaining and integral creative community that fosters connectedness and engagement in society. Previously, Rasu leveraged his experience in supporting networks as the Cultural Network Curator at the Lambent Foundation. He designed programs that promoted shared learning and fostered collaboration through both live and digital experiences aligning Lambent’s values and approach with organizational practices.

Prior to Lambent, Rasu served as the Director of Recruiting and Community Engagement at NEW INC, the incubator of the New Museum. In this capacity, he managed mentorship and alumni initiatives, shaped organizational culture, and created a diverse pool of applicants from tech, art, and entrepreneurial sectors. He also served as the Director of Community Programs at MAPP International Productions, where he produced events such as Blink Your Eyes: Sekou Sundiata Revisited, Triple Consciousness: Black Feminism(s) in the Time of Now, and Days of Art and Ideas.

Mr. Jilani is deeply committed to the cultural ecosystem in New York City and volunteers his time as a mentor and creative coach for organizations such as Recess Art, NEW INC, and Florida International University’s Ratcliff Design Incubator. He also serves on the boards of organizations like The Laundromat Project, Kinfolk, Afrotectopia, and The Billie Holiday Theater in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He was a former steering committee member of New York Community Trust’s Mosaic Fund and Network, Museum Hue’s Board of Trustees, and co-founder and former member of the NYC Innovation Collective.

Dexter Wimberly is an American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions in galleries and institutions around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco; The Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas; The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte; KOKI Arts in Tokyo, Japan; BODE in Berlin, Germany; and The Third Line in Dubai, UAE. His exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications including The New York Times and Artforum; and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The Kinkade Family Foundation. Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, and the founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan. He is also the co-founder and CEO of the online education platform, CreativeStudy.

Joe Fig is an artist known for work that explores the creative process, the spaces where art is made and contemplated. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with over thirty solo and fifty group exhibitions. He is the author of the acclaimed books Inside the Painter’s Studio and Inside the Artist’s Studio (Princeton Architectural Press), which share an intimate view inside the studios of today’s leading artists. His work can be found in numerous museums and leading private collections including the Parrish Museum, Norton Museum, New Museum and the Fogg Museum. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Artforum, Art in America, ArtNews and Modern Painters as well as several international magazines. Joe is the Department Chair of both Fine Arts and Visual Studies at Ringling College of Art & Design. He earned his BFA and MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York.  He is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York, where his current exhibition: Contemplating Compositions is on view until October 21^st, 2023. 

OG’s of the outlaw printmaking scene, Huck, Hernandez, and Fick will field tough questions and gentle prods from one of their partners in crime, Kirsten Flaherty. We’ll learn how the most energized sector of the print world came to be, how they make stuff, and what new territories they are plundering.

Bill Fick is a printmaker who lives in Durham, North Carolina.

He is a Lecturing Fellow in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University where he teaches drawing, printmaking, comics and zines. He is also Co-Director of Super G Print Lab and Director the Zine Machine Printed Matter Festival also in Durham. His work has been exhibited from New York City to Seoul, South Korea and can be found in the collections of the St. Louis Art Museum, Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, The New York Public Library and the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University. In 1993 Fick was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship and in 1995 a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship. Fick is also co-author with Beth Grabowski of Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes published by Laurence King Publishing, London. 

For the past 30+ years Fick has been making super-graphic narrative prints that deal with a variety of satirical and sociopolitical themes. He’s especially interested in making work that bridges the gap between fine art and lowbrow art.

His current work focuses on monsters, clowns, misfits and low-life, characters that reflect society’s ever-growing anxieties and insecurities. These images are presented in a variety of forms including prints, posters, and t-shirts.

As the current Associate Director of Pace Prints, Kirsten Flaherty has over a decade of experience working in print-related organizations across New York including the International Fine Print Dealers Association, IPCNY, and Dieu Donné Papermill. As a working artist, Flaherty focuses in mezzotint and etching. She has also taught numerous print demonstrations across the United States and sits on the Board of Directors of the New York Society of Etchers and Manhattan Graphics Center.

Tom Huck, also spelled Hück, (born 1971), is an American printmaker best known for his large-scale satirical woodcuts. He lives and works in Park Hills, Missouri, where he runs his own press, Evil Prints.  His work is influenced by Albrecht Dürer, José Guadalupe Posada, R. Crumb, and Honoré Daumier.   Huck’s woodcut prints are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of Congress, Spencer Museum of Art, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Saint Louis Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Fogg Art Museum, Michael C. Carlos Museum, and New York Public Library.

Huck’s illustrations have appeared in publications such as The Village Voice, The Riverfront Times, and the Minneapolis City Pages.

Aside from creating woodcuts, Huck has also designed logos, posters, and apparel for musicians and organizations. Huck has created the artwork on posters, t-shirts, and ephemera for bands such as Motorhead, The Roots, and A Perfect Circle among others. In 2002 he designed the cover of The Roots’ album Phrenology. 

Join author and educator Yanely Espinal, and Senior Critic Dexter Wimberly for an in-depth and frank, online conversation about budgeting tactics and tools for visual artists.

The talk will cover topics including:

• Why better budgeting is a key component to building your art career
• What are the best tools for managing the finances of your artist studio
• What can you do right now to break an ongoing cycle of debt
• What are the most important money rules visual artists need to know

Yanely Espinal is a Brooklyn-born ball of energy! She’s an educator with a gift for storytelling and a passion for explaining financial concepts in a straightforward way. While working as an elementary school teacher, she decided to change her financial life by paying off $20,000 of debt in just 18 months. In 2015 she started MissBeHelpful, a YouTube channel that now has over 4 million views, to help others learn the money skills she never learned in school. Her book, Mind Your Money, was released in May of 2023 and quickly became an Amazon Bestseller, with thousands of copies sold in the first month. Yanely is the Director of Educational Outreach for Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit working to ensure that every high school student gets a full semester of personal finance education. She’s also the host of Financially Inclined from Marketplace, a video podcast for teens about money lessons for living life your own way! Instagram: @missbehelpful

Dexter Wimberly is an American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions in galleries and institutions around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; The Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas, Texas; The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina; KOKI Arts in Tokyo, Japan; BODE in Berlin, Germany; and The Third Line in Dubai, UAE. His exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications including The New York Times and Artforum; and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The Kinkade Family Foundation. Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, and the founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan. He is also the co-founder and CEO of the online education platform, CreativeStudy. Photo credit: Hiroki Kobayashi

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 2023 – 2024 academic year.

David Antonio Cruz (b. 1974, Philadelphia) received his BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute and his MFA from Yale University. He also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and completed the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum, New York. Recent residencies and fellowships include the LMCC Workspace Residency, New York (2015); Gateway Project Spaces, Newark, NJ (2016); BRIC Workspace Residency, Brooklyn (2019); Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Award (2018), and Mass Cultural Council’s Artist Fellowships (2022). Cruz’s work has been included in notable exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C (2014/2021); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2006/2016); the Ford Foundation, New York (2019); the Brooklyn Museum (2019); ) McNay Art Museum, San Antonio (2019), and the Kemper Art Museum (2021/2022. Cruz is currently on view for A Place For Me: Figurative Painting Now, ICA Boston (2022), The Block Museum at Northwestern (2022),  The New England Triennial at Fruitland Museum (2022), and the Museum of the African Diaspora (2022). Recent press includes The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, WhiteHot Magazine, W Magazine, and El Centro Journal.

Cruz is a professor at Columbia University School of the Arts.

http://www.cruzantoniodavid.com/

Monique Long is a writer and independent curator based in New York City with experience in curatorial and program development across the United States. Her collaborations include institutions such as the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and Guild Hall in East Hampton. Her exhibition, When the Children Come Home, is a solo presentation for David Antonio Cruz, currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Long has contributed to arts publications widely, often writing about contemporary art, personal essays, and fashion history. She is also working on a book about Philadelphia and contemporary art.

moniquelong.com