Custom Categories: Fellows

Rebeca Cintrón-Loáisiga (she/her/ella) is a Boricua living in the diaspora. She is currently pursuing her master’s at NYU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies with a concentration in Museum Studies; she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Rutgers University. Her professional expertise includes anti-colonial education, facilitating decolonial cultural workshops, community engagement and organizing. Rebeca’s research interests include Afro-Latine, Indigenous, Mestizaje & Latinidad identities, Latin American migration, diasporic communities, cultural retention, and Latine cultural representation within museums and cultural institutions.

Project: Rebeca will work closely with the Education Department to support the development and reimagining of the Civic Practice Seminar, a temporarily dormant component of the Civic Practice Project.

Lulu Luyao Chang is a multimedia artist based in New York and currently studies at the School of Visual Arts in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media program. Born in Japan, and raised in Beijing, they have been subjected to and struggled to overcome, a politics of the unsaid—whether through social norms or outright repression, many important issues surrounding sex, recognition, and labor are silenced in the places they have lived. Identifying as non-binary, and working primarily in installation art, they constantly strive to amplify the voices of China’s sexual minorities—from women to members of its often-repressed LGBTQ community—to make them heard within the blaring, chauvinist rhetoric of national becoming.

Project: Luyao will work within the archives and learn about the best practices for maintaining an artist’s estate, at a very special artist-endowed foundation.

Amanda Elena Brito is a Cuban-American art historian born and raised in Miami, Florida. She received her B.A. in Art History from Florida International University and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies at Florida State University. Her research focuses on Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean visual culture with a dedicated emphasis on socially engaged, de-colonial art practice. Her curatorial philosophy is predicated on a profound belief in the social utility of art and often addresses themes of migration, identity, and exile. She has held positions and internships at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. While at the PAMM, she assisted in the development and execution of Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection.

Project: Amanda will work on programming that coincides with “La casa que nos inventamos: Contemporary Art From Guadalajara”, a major international group exhibition on the growing arts scene in Guadalajara, Mexico. Oklahoma Contemporary is geared to have a full suite of exhibitions, public art, and educational programs underway.

Candace Borders is a PhD Candidate in American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. She received her BA in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis in 2017. Her dissertation work engages interdisciplinary methods to study the intersections of race, gender, and public housing in St. Louis, Missouri. Candace has worked in museum education at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. In her spare time, she practices and teaches yoga.

Project: Candace will help to prepare for the 10th Great Rivers Biennial exhibition, which will be on view from September 9, 2022, through February 12, 2023. The fellow will be assigned tasks relating to exhibition research, interpretation, object-related care, and museum registration, exhibition design, and program planning and conduct outreach to thirty Great Rivers Biennial artists and alumni as well as past jurors, and participate in the planning of a 10th edition GRB alumni program to take place at the Museum in Fall 2022.

Alexandria Bingham is a dual master candidate in California at Claremont Graduate University studying for her MBA and Master of Art Business. She has recently completed her first year of her masters program. Her background includes a degree in Art History, focusing in visual arts, with an emphasis in contemporary art, curation and public programming. She is passionate about art and activism and working to be a proponent in starting necessary conversations, bridging diverse communities, challenging societal norms, and pushing the boundaries of what’s considered art and who it’s for. She is an innovative creative professional and leader with a drive to establish and sustain creative inclusive communities and facilitate the creation of cultural equity.

Project: Alexandria will assist with an employee-focused “Art Ambassador” program that would train associates/employees to give virtual and in-person tours of the permanent collection at different sites across the US. The fellow also will gain hands-on experience installing and managing a corporate art collection and working with artists and art consultants to facilitate image use licenses for specific pieces in the collection (Image Use License Project).

Lara Arafeh is a graduate of Central Saint Martins and Sotheby’s Institute. Her work and interests focus on the relationship between art and social activism as well as decolonial feminist theory in relation to Arab women. Lara brings together the Arab community in New York by hosting talks with artists and creatives from the community.

Project: Lara will assist with planning an interdisciplinary project, Survivance: Centering Native Voices through Anti-Colonial Actions (tentative title), that will culminate in an exhibition, catalog, and convening. This wide-reaching institutional initiative will radically center Native voices and challenge collective understandings of the pivotal role of Native peoples in United States history.

Cheyene Adams is an emerging curator and cultural producer based in Baltimore, Maryland. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, she earned a BS in Digital Media Arts from Bowie State University in 2020. Cheyene has gained significant experience in the arts by interning and assisting in projects at The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), Maryland Institute Black Archives (Baltimore, MD), the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay (Annapolis, MD), and Harpers Ferry Design Center (Harpers Ferry WV). She is currently a graduate student—and Leslie King Hammond Graduate Fellow— in the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Curatorial Practice MFA program, where her research is focused on mental health and self-care practices within BIPOC artistic communities.

Project: Cheyene will support the Curatorial collections team in the ongoing maintenance of digital records related to the Museum’s archive and collections and also conduct research in the Museum Archives to support the Museum Archivist.

Frances Melgarejo, M.A. is an emerging visual arts professional and Indigenous studies specialist of Quechua descent. Born and raised in Florida, she grew up in a multicultural household and developed a passion for arts and culture at an early age. In 2005 she graduated from Smith College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Portuguese Brazilian Studies. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Brazil where she began her studies of Indigenous arts and culture. Exposure to Indigenous rituals led her to a career in holistic wellness before returning to the U.S. to advance her academic career. A Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow, she graduated from the University of Florida in the spring of 2021 with a master’s degree in Latin American studies, specializing in Indigenous studies. Her award-winning thesis focused on the cultural revival of the Yawanawa people of the Brazilian Amazon, highlighting the impact of visual arts and their first woman shaman. Through research, lectures, and curation, Frances seeks to support women, foster intercultural connections through the arts, and advance appreciation of Indigenous cultures.

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

Andrea Lewis is a proud Berkeley, California Native. Having recently graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a Bachelors in Art History and World Languages and Literatures (Spanish and French), she is now living in Tulum, Mexico, where she is currently co-creating an online art gallery called Plural. She worked and interned for the past few years in the art world, which has inspired her to create an enterprise that prioritizes artistic identity, sustainable relationships between artists and collectors, and the cultivation of new collectors. Art is her form of peace and resistance. She hopes to merge these international art communities to uplift individual artistic identities and provide a space for multicultural learning and unity. As an ArtTable fellow, partnered with the Philadelphia Museum, she is thrilled at the opportunity to develop programs that strive to genuinely engage Philadelphia’s community members, the art world, and those whose stories are being told. As well as continue learning how public programs serve as a powerful tool to enrich society and the influence of the art world.

Project: Andrea will gain firsthand experience in the planning and development of between 3-5 proposals for public and community programming related to the early American art reinstallation which highlights underrepresented voices.

Alejandra López-Oliveros is a first-year master’s student at the Institute of Fine Arts (New York University), focusing on contemporary art of the Americas. Her research interests include photography, critical theory, and intersectional feminism. She has previously worked at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow and the Center for Art on Migration Politics (CAMP) in Copenhagen. She holds an MA in Art Museums and Gallery Studies from the University of Leicester and a BA in Art History from the University of Granada.

Project: Alejandra will assist with the Feminist Incubator, an ongoing series of short-term residencies, happenings, conversations, performances, and public discourses focusing on intersectionality, and empowerment of multiple creative disciplines.