Custom Categories: Fellows

Xiao graduated last year from Brandeis University with majors in art history and studio art. As a woman painter, naturally Xiao is interested in feminine art and is full of passion for studying women artists and visual representations of female figures in artworks. Her research focuses on gender issues and sexuality in East Asian art. Xiao is an a cat-lover and has a super cute family cat in China, who is puffy and very lazy. In her spare time, Xiao likes to look for restaurants with good food and sweets.

Project: Xiao will join the team of specialists putting together the interdepartmental LGBTQ+ Art Material Culture & History Auction to be held on August 18, 2022, and will participate in all aspects of the auction process which include catalogue production, editing, assisting with condition reports, managing the in-house inventory, installing the sale preview, meeting with clients to view the exhibition, event support, phone bidding during the auction and post-sale support. Xiao act as the sale coordinator and project manager for all sale logistics and will work alongside the Director and President of Swann Galleries, Nicholas Lowry who puts this sale together annually.

christian reeder is an Atlanta-born, chicago-based scholar, curator, and artist currently earning their M.A of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). chris’ practice is rooted in the intersection of Black feminist anthropology and Black Diasporic Studies. their scholarship on Black culture, cultural preservation, and curating memory shapes their interests in questioning the effect visual art has on knowledge production and social consciousness. as a cultural anthropologist, chris centers truth-telling in curating the complexity of culture as social knowledge. their position at the Montclair Art Museum will allow them to curate stories of the past, present, and future in expansive and generative ways that will illuminate truth on contemporary Indigenous presence, social praxis, and curatorial-community work. chris’ current practice focuses on archival management, booking making, mixed medium curatorial projects for architecture galleries, public art projects and shows for MFA students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. as foundational principles in their politic, chris believes in reparations for trans Atlantic Slave Trade and that tampons should be free.

Project: christian will support the curatorial department in the reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection of historical and contemporary Native American art, which will open in September 2023.

Tatyana Neal is a rising senior studying art history and art education at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. Growing up surrounded by creatives, she knew she was destined to work in a field that would involve art. Born in Houston and raised in Chicago, Tatyana was given opportunities to be involved in various programs such as the Interlochen Film Academy and the Roosevelt University Entrepreneurship Academy. Attending Texas Southern University has provided her the opportunity to shadow and be mentored by museum director and curator Dr. Alvia Wardlaw. Tatyana has attended the Mellon Summer Academy at MFAH, where she gained volumes of curator insight. As a Mellon Fellow, Tatyana is interested in bringing her diverse perspective to the curatorial field while pursuing her passion for modern and contemporary art and art history. After completing the academy, she continued her curatorial journey as a Fellow for Decorative Arts, Crafts, and Design at MFAH(Museum of Fine Arts Houston), shadowing curator Cindi Strauss.

Project: Tatyana will research for the development and planning of a traveling exhibition on a history on the genesis of the contemporary Native American community of New York and the New York Movement of Contemporary Native American Art.

Juliet Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and arts organizer from Los Angeles, CA, whose work creates idiosyncratic half-realities and ruminates on embodiment, the edges of language, goops of all kinds. Writing is a central structure, with other forms circling like planets. In addition to her artistic practice she regularly participates in collaborative, curatorial, and disability justice projects. She received a BFA from California State University, Long Beach in 2017, and an MFA from Goldsmiths College of London in 2021. Her work has been shown in Los Angeles, CA, Queens, NY, Palm Springs, CA, and London, UK.

Project: Juliet will work on organizing, coordinating, and executing tasks related to the planning and production of a project to expand the idea of a land acknowledgment, the act of recognizing the Indigenous right to land within colonized places.

Stefanie Jason works at the intersection of research, writing and curating. Currently an Art History PhD student at Rutgers University, Stefanie is interested in memory and desire in contemporary African diasporic art. With an MA in Curatorial Practice from Wits University, Stefanie’s thesis focused on the absence of pioneering photojournalist Mabel Cetu from South African mainstream archives. Stefanie also created the zine titled “Centring Silences: The Elusive Photographic Archive of Mabel Cetu,” which features a collection of responses to the memory of Cetu. Stefanie has written for publications such as Contemporary And, Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI), and ARTS.BLACK.

Project: Stefanie will form an integral part of the curatorial team of the exhibition “Jayne Cortez: A Poet’s Guide to the World”, working directly with the Artistic Director and Assistant Curator to engage in extensive archival and historical research in partnership with Cortez’s estate and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

Kimari Jackson was born and raised in Miami, Florida where her love for the arts grew at a young age from visiting museums and the influence from her father. She is currently working on her Master’s in Museum Studies and Historical Preservation at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida where she was also featured in the Citizens Curator Project at the University of Central Florida for er curated project “Black in White.” Kimari recently completed an Internship with the Bass Museum in Miami Beach, Florida as a Collections and Exhibitions Intern.

Project: Kimari will participate in an eight-week cross-departmental project with the Museum Services Division, Curatorial Division, and Museum Libraries to expand SAM’s permanent collection records within the museum’s collection management system, The Museum System (TMS). Specifically, Kimari will focus on researching and connecting audio and video content to existing SAM collection TMS records, which in turn populate the museum’s public-facing database, eMuseum. This involves working with various audio and video file types to ensure files are compatible with TMS, including editing media assets and establishing proper copyright use. Through this process, Kimari will create detailed documentation of her work that will function as a model for future TMS integration projects. This project will importantly give Kimari experience for developing better access and more transparency to digital assets, which is particularly important for all museums right now as the pandemic has increased a public need for virtual offerings.

Michelle Huynh Chu is a historian of art, architecture and design. Her current research and writing addresses modernization and Enlightenment-thinking in Victorian Britain in relation to historical styles, urban planning and media technologies. She is also interested in landscape and climate-related topics. She received her M.A. in Modern Art (MODA) from Columbia University and her B.F.A. in Film from New York University where she double-majored in History.

Project: Michelle will conduct research and collaborate on content development for an upcoming exhibition and book on American textile designer Dorothy Liebes (1897 – 1972), scheduled to open July 7, 2023, gaining insights into how both the Curatorial and Education departments work.

Luiza Repsold França is a Masters candidate at the Williams College and Clark Art Institute Graduate Program in Art History. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, she is committed to using her research to forge transcultural connections through scholarship, primarily in the fields of craft, textiles, and contemporary art, within Brazil and Latin America at large. She is interested in centering marginalized voices and stories through archival recovery and non-academic modes of knowledge transmission, as well as material-oriented methodologies and hand-making-based thinking practices. She has been learning and exchanging through professional and research positions at institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Clark Art Institute’s division of Research and Academic Programs. She holds a B.A. in Art History with honors and minors in Fine Art and English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania.

Project: Luiza will assist with a major collections initiative being launched by the Curatorial Department, and specifically will lead research into the Museum’s archives and publications in an effort to update information related to the institution’s exhibition history.

Sophia Ellis is an educator, curator, and late-night story enthusiast. She unitizes museums, arts, and public spaces as centers for performance and self-expression as she advocates for participant-based projects and exhibitions as sources of informal learning and community strength. She recently earned her M.A in Public Humanities from Brown University, where her focus was on the intersection of public art and arts-based learning, specifically how these practices aid in the refusal of settler colonial logics, especially within the Caribbean Diaspora. She received her B.A. from the University of Central Florida in Humanities and Studio Art with a minor in Cognitive Sciences and spent three years as an ArtsLiteracy educator at Habla: El Centro de Lengua y Cultura in Mérida, Yucatán. In Providence, she has worked at ¡CityArts! for Youth, Stages of Freedom Museum, and FirstWorks, honing in on community-based practices.

Project: Sophia will research and assist with logistical support for the Nina Katchadourian exhibition in spring 2023. This is the third in a series of collaborative exhibitions in which a contemporary artist’s work shares a gallery with Morgan collection objects. Sophia will assist in various facets of late-stage exhibition work, including completion of the catalog and preparation of public information on the exhibition and its programming.

Yocari De Los Santos received her M.A in Latin American & Caribbean Studies with an Advance Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University in May 2022. With a deep focus on Latinx and Latin American contemporary artists, she contemplates the dynamic of what it is like to be an artist in contemporary America. She has recently completed a Curatorial Fellowship and has worked on other projects including a published blog post and a series of workshops on Critical Race Theory (CRT) at the Solomon R, Guggenheim Museum. The series of workshops focused on speaking about race in museum education. She is currently a Galley Guide for the Guggenheim Museum.

Project: Yocari will assist in program management of CALA’s programmatic offerings, including exhibitions, artist commissions, international residencies, performance series, and youth programs.