Custom Categories: Team

Founder/Director, ESTE ARTE | New York, NY

Laura Bardier (Montevideo, b.1976) is Executive Director of the James Howell Foundation (New York), Director of ESTE ARTE International Contemporary Art Fair (Punta del Este), and board member of ICI—Independent Curators International. She has written on contemporary art in publications such as Domus, Arte al Día, Review, and has curated several exhibitions including ‘Robots’ at PAN in Naples (2008), ‘Los Impoliticos’ en PAN de Nápoles (2009) and ‘Richard Garet: Espacios no-Eucildeos’ at the EAC of Montevideo (2007). She has organized international panels and conferences including 2nd Forum on New Media Art, the 1st Forum on Documentation and Art and the New Media Art radio series for MoMA-PS1 radio, at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

In 2002 she collaborates with the Municipality of Naples, to create the first municipal center for contemporary art. From 2004-08 she served as curator at PAN, Naples Museum of Contemporary Art, where she oversaw contemporary programming and started the museum’s video art collection. Between 2008-10 she plays the role of curator of the private collection of Jonathon Carroll (New York / London), between 2010-13 in the collection of Daniel and Estrellita B. Brodsky (New York). Bardier received his master’s degree in new media curation at the Donaü Universität, Austria (2002). She is a member of the National Committee of Visual Arts of Uruguay, and has been a jury in several awards, such as the Cezanne Prize of the French Embassy in Uruguay and the Parsons School of Design.

Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts | Richmond, VA

Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where worked from 2000 – 2017. She has served as director of the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995-2000) and a program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-1995). In 2000 she was one of six curators selected to organize the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art. During her tenure at the CAMH, Cassel Oliver organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Cinema Remixed & Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970 with Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee (2009); a major retrospective on Benjamin Patterson, Born in the State of Flux/us (2010) and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012). She has also mounted significant survey exhibitions for Benjamin Patterson, Donald Moffett, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jennie C. Jones, Angel Otero and Annabeth Rosen. 

Her 2018 debut exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was a 50-year survey of work by Howardena Pindell entitled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen. The exhibition co-organized with Naomi Beckwith, the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, was named one of the most influential of the decade. Most recently, Cassel Oliver organized the exhibition, Cosmologies from the Tree of Life that featured over thirty newly acquired works from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. She is currently developing the group exhibition, The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse, scheduled to open at the VMFA May, 2021. Cassel Oliver is the recipient of a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship (2007); the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Award (2011); the Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg Foundation-to-Life Fellowship at Hunter College (2016) and the James A. Porter Book Award from Howard University (2018). From 2016-17, she was a Senior Fellow in Curatorial Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. Cassel Oliver holds a M.A. in art history from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and, B.S. in communications from the University of Texas at Austin.

Wendy Clark was appointed Director of Museums, Visual Arts, and Indemnity at the National Endowment
for the Arts in July 2014. In this position, she manages the NEA’s grantmaking portfolio for museums and
visual arts, oversees the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity program of the Federal Council on the Arts and
Humanities and special initiatives, such as the Blue Star Museums program.

Clark has more than 20 years of experience managing various federal grant programs and special
initiatives at the NEA in museums, visual arts, and design. In this capacity she advises hundreds of
museums and non-profit organizations annually regarding federal funding of exhibitions, conservation,
commissions, care of collections, artist residencies, educational outreach, and reinstallation projects.  She
has represented the agency annually at the American Alliance of Museums conference as both a
presenter and exhibitor. Clark is a member of ArtTable, an organization dedicated to advancing women’s
leadership in the visual arts field and the American Alliance of Museums.

Clark has worked on initiatives to make the NEA more accessible to Native American communities, tribal
governments and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Other major responsibilities include
recruiting hundreds of national museum professionals and artists annually for peer review, and
adjudicating proposals for federal support. Additionally while at the NEA, she managed the Rosa Parks
Sculpture competition for the Architect of the Capitol, the American Masterpieces/Visual Arts Touring
Program and the Renna Scholarship Grants Program. Clark has been a juror for the United States Mint’s
Artistic Infusion Program to improve coin design and administered the cooperative agreements for the
Mayor’s Institute on City Design and Your Town, as well as the Challenge Grant Program for design and
construction of cultural facilities.

Clark has experience in executive search and recruiting, as Vice President of Arts Consulting Group, Inc.,
a full-service management consultancy for the cultural sector. She also has extensive training in diversity,
equity and inclusion, implicit bias, ethics, anti-harassment, Hatch Act, leadership, cyber-security, and
executive coaching.

Early in her career, Clark held positions at the Illinois Arts Council in public affairs, visual arts, and design.
There she worked on a traveling exhibition program initiative, and a cultural facilities planning and design
grant program called Building by Design, which was awarded a Federal Design Achievement Award by
the NEA’s Presidential Design Awards jury. She was an NEA Fellow in arts administration, and was the
chairman of the Design Review Committee for the Civic Association of Hollin Hills, a mid-century modern
residential development designed by architect Charles Goodman and landscape architect Dan Kiley.
Clark has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and studied Elizabethan history, art, and
literature at New College, Oxford University. She is originally from Dayton, Ohio.

Owner, Smart-Rights.com | Seattle, WA

Director, J. Rinehart Gallery | Seattle, WA

Independent Glassblower, Jewelry Designer, and Curator | Seattle, WA

Co-Founder, Foto Relevance | Houston, TX

Texas Representative, Bonhams | Houston, TX

Art Trip Consultant at Art and Travel LLC | Houston, TX

Independent Art Market Specialist | Miami, FL