Virtual | The AT Forum: Women in Leadership

2:30pm PT / 3:30pm MT / 4:30pm CT / 5:30pm ET

As a woman in a leadership role, what were the top 3 challenges when you started your career and what are they now? Are the challenges from your early career days resolved? How have they changed?

One of the biggest challenges for women in the workforce is a work-life balance since child care, elder care, and other family responsibilities still weigh more heavily on women. What are 3 things that would help change this burden and enhance this balance?

What are the ways in which women can help other women while also enhancing their own leadership roles? How have you already incorporated these into your practice?

These are the prompt questions that ArtTable provided to several of our current members who currently hold or have held leadership positions within the art world. Presented in partnership with the CAA (College Art Association) 50th Anniversary Celebration of Feminism + Art, ArtTable is pleased to present the first program in the new The AT Forum Series: Women in Leadership, a Pecha Kucha-style program welcoming leading women in the arts to provide their insight and expertise on leadership, equity, and intersectional feminism.

The prompt questions that were provided to the speakers could easily be answered in hours-long conversations or lengthy essays. In this Pecha Kucha-style program, our speakers have been provided with just 3 minutes each to respond to one of the prompt questions. After hearing from some of the speakers, all attendees will go into breakout rooms for a group discussion, after which the others speakers will address a different prompt question.

The AT Forum is a new recurring program series in which ArtTable members are invited to speak to a specific topic in a Pecha Kucha-style format, followed by breakout room discussions for all attendees to get involved. Keep an eye out for the next AT Forum program!

ArtTable is proud to partner with the CAA (College Art Association). If you would like to attend the CAA 50^th Anniversary Celebration of Feminism + Art via Livestream on September 23 at 4 p.m. ET, please register here: https://caafeminism50.eventbrite.co.uk.

This program is free for anyone who would like to attend, though registration is required.

Donations are sincerely appreciated and go towards supporting ArtTable’s initiatives.

Please note that this program will offer automatic closed captioning services. 
If you require additional accommodations, please email programs@arttable.org.

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Speakers

[Additional Details Forthcoming]

Laura Ballman is a credentialed art market expert. She offers clients a global perspective developed during two decades building trusted relationships across four continents. Previously, Laura led US Art & Finance for Deloitte, the world’s largest business consulting firm, serving blue-chip auction houses, collectors, galleries, governments, museums, and financial institutions. Earlier in her career, Laura served Democrat and Republican Administrations in a number of international-facing roles, including as head of intelligence for the FBI Art Crime Team. Laura holds an MA in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art and an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) compliant through March 2023.

Tanya Desdunes, a Haitian-American and African- American living in Miami, Florida since 2014, has worked with Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, Inc. since 2018 in multiple capacities. Desdunes holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in History from St. John’s University. She joined DVCAI as the Executive Director in July 2021 and is excited to uphold artistic representation and cultural preservation of the Caribbean and Latin Diaspora arts community in South Florida.

 

Valerie Gillespie is an independent curator based in Dallas. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of New England in Portland and curatorial practice from New York University. Her undergraduate degree is in Studio Art and Spanish from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. During her years abroad in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, Valerie studied art and architecture. While completing her artist in residence program with Università Iuav di Venezia in Venice, Italy, she studied painting under the guidance of Maurizio Pellegrin. Valerie currently is the Director of Fine Arts at the Winston School and owner of Pencil on Paper Gallery in Dallas. Some of her recent exhibitions include curatorial projects with the 500X Gallery in Dallas, 400H Gallery in Fort Worth, the Hawn Gallery at Southern Methodist University, the Martin Museum at Baylor University, and the Texas Visual Arts Association.

Cecilia Yueyi Jalboukh is the Founder and Director of Brooklyn-based YI GALLERY. YI GALLERY program features a diverse and eclectic mixture of emerging and mid-career international artists. Started in 2018 as a curatorial project exhibiting in non-traditional settings, YI has expanded to include a collaborative exhibition space in Bushwick (2020 – 2021). The gallery program continues to evolve with a new space inside Brooklyn’s vibrant creative hub Industry City, launched in 2021. YI is committed to offering a platform for distinctive artistic voices, while enhancing the public’s interaction with contemporary art.

Passionate about promoting Indigenous values, Frances Melgarejo, M.A. (Peruvian Quechua/Irish) is a researcher and emerging curator of Indigenous arts of the Americas. Through a feminist lens and a phenomenological approach, she aims to unearth women artists’ muted voices to celebrate their significant contributions and learn from their unique experiences.

Currently, she is an administrative assistant for the Native American arts organization in New York City, Amerinda Inc. She was introduced to the organization as an ArtTable Fellow in the summer of 2021, where she performed as a curatorial assistant to Native curator David Bunn Martine. Recently, she conducted research for an exhibit on contemporary Seminole patchwork projected to show in South Florida in 2024. At this time, she is conducting preliminary research for a New York City exhibit showcasing contemporary visual art by Indigenous women.

Nuria Richards is an arts professional who is passionate about art collections and the way they positively impact the market and philanthropy. She attended the Fine Arts School at the National University in Mexico City and holds an Art Business Graduate degree from Sotheby’s Institute of Art – Claremont Graduate University where she extended her academic interests to Economics, Cultural Studies, and Management of Corporate Collections.

After studying in New York and Los Angeles, Nuria relocated to Miami and worked in the gallery system holding the position of Executive Manager for Piero Atchugarry Gallery, and Director of Museum Relations for Ascaso Gallery. Around this period she became part of ArtTable Florida Chapter as Chair of Programming.

Nuria supports young and emerging artists through the curatorial project Clandestina and is the founder of RICHARDS & Co, an Art Management & Estate Planning Agency that evaluates and creates strategies for acquiring, selling, transferring, and donating art. She works, with families and individuals, designing the sale and acquisition of works by artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo, Diego Rivera, Wifredo Lam, Joaquín Torres-García, Victor Vasarely, and Leonora Carrington. Her relationship with art and involvement with museums, galleries, artists, and collectors in the US and Mexico seeks to create cultural impact through the practice of art collecting.

Nuria’s goal is to generate strategies for collectors to successfully fulfill their art interests, while positively impacting the community. She has been a conduit between secondary and primary markets for a generation of artists and collectors that were caught in the middle of a rapidly changing art world.

Teresa Silva is the Executive and Artistic Director at the Chicago Artists Coalition, a nonprofit organization supporting emerging and mid-career artists and curators. Silva has presented exhibitions, talks and lectures at venues such as the Chicago Cultural Center, Mana Contemporary, School of the Art Institute, Ox-Bow Art School and Artists’ Residency, and the Artist Communities Alliance. She has served as a Visual Arts panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous others. In 2018, she was an Artists’ Administrators Resident at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency Program in Captiva, FL. In 2022, Silva was ranked #5 in NewCity’s prestigious list, Art 50: Chicago’s Visual Vanguard for her influence and contributions to the Chicago art community.

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