Christa Clarke is an Independent Curator and Senior Advisor at the Center for Curatorial Leadership. Previously, she was curator of the arts of global Africa at The Newark Museum of Art, where her work was supported with major grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment of Humanities. During her sixteen-year tenure at Newark, she organized exhibitions on topics ranging from men’s fashion to Nigerian modernism and established Newark’s significant collection of modern and contemporary African art. Since 2018, Clarke has served as consulting curator to various institutions including Smith College Museum of Art, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Williams College Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In addition to her curatorial work, Clarke has been a research fellow at Harvard University, the Clark Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian, and held teaching appointments at NYU Abu Dhabi, University of Pennsylvania and Boston University. Her books include Representing Africa in American Art Museums (2011, co-edited with Kathleen Berzock), the award-winning African Art at the Barnes Foundation (2015), Arts of Global Africa: The Newark Museum Collection (2018), and The Activist Collector: Lida Clanton Broner’s 1938 Journey from Newark to South Africa (2022). Clarke was a 2012 fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership and, from 2017 to 2019, served as board president of the Association of Art Museum Curators, of which she is now lifetime trustee. Clarke received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.
Julia Halperin is Executive Editor of Artnet News, where she oversees editorial operations for the world’s most widely read art news site and manages a staff of editors and writers in London, Berlin, and New York. She is also the co-founder of the Burns-Halperin Report, a data-driven report on equity in museums and the art market. Previously, she served as museums editor of The Art Newspaper, where she oversaw international coverage of museums and other major art institutions, and as news editor of Art + Auction magazine. Her writing has appeared in WIRED magazine, the New York Observer, and New York magazine. Halperin holds a BA in art history and English literature from Columbia University.
Arthur Lewis is a Partner and Creative Director of Fine Arts and UTA Artist Space at leading global talent, entertainment, and sports company, UTA. A patron of the arts and a significant collector of both emerging artists and Contemporary African American Art, Lewis is a member of the board of Governors for Otis College of Art and Design and on the boards of amfAR, Prospect New Orleans and USC Roski School of Art and Design. Additionally, he is a member of the National Advisory Committee for The New Orleans African American Museum and is a Global council member for the Studio Museum in Harlem.
A well-known and distinguished figure in the art world, Lewis joined UTA in 2019 to oversee the Fine Arts division and exhibition space. During his tenure, the Artist Space has exhibited diverse showcases for artists including Blitz Bazawule, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Ernie Barnes, Chloe Chiasson and Mandy El-Sayegh, among others.
Prior to UTA, Lewis previously served as Executive Vice President of the New York Design Office for Kohl’s, where he oversaw product design and development. Lewis has also held executive leadership roles at HSN, Hautelook, and Gap Inc., where he focused on brand management, merchandising and product development.
Lewis, who spends his time between Los Angeles and Atlanta, is a tireless advocate for artists and the arts community at large.