November 11, 2022 | 8:00 am – 9:00 am
Join ArtTable in Washington, DC for a BreakfastTable program with Haili Francis, Major Gifts Officer + Manager of Special Projects, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Please join us in conversation with Haili about her career journey and current projects.
Haili Francis is an scholar, artist, and Harvard-trained cultural producer with specialties in African American and contemporary art. While pursuing her bachelor of fine arts at the University of Southern California, she completed a Getty Multicultural Internship at the California African American Museum and studied abroad in a fine arts program in Italy. She also received a graduate certificate in nonprofit management from USC and served on the Museum Services Council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 2009-2011. Haili has worked extensively with the Kinsey Foundation for Arts and Education and their award-winning private African American art collection, The Kinsey African American Art and History Collection.
As a museum practitioner at the Smithsonian, Haili has worked in fundraising, board management, and creative projects such as the nationally touring exhibitions, Men of Change: Power. Triumph, Truth., Robert Blackburn & Modern Printmaking, and Negro Motorist Green Book. Her dedication to arts leadership and public service led to an appointment to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Board in 2016 by Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, DC, in which Haili helped steward a $30M annual budget for arts funding in the nation’s capital. Her commitment to inclusive practices within the cultural sector led to an invitation from the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) to serve on the 2017 National Program Committee for the annual Museum Conference under the theme, “Gateways for Understanding: Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion.” Currently, Haili leads the advancement department at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and writes about contemporary Black diasporic art, culture and fashion in Folklife Magazine.
Haili taught the inaugural African American Art History I & II courses at Trinity Washington University and is an alumna of the Getty Leadership Institute and AAM/Getty Career Management Fellowship. She has a Masters in Museum Studies from Harvard where she was awarded the Derek Bok Public Service Prize at commencement and serves on the board of the Washington, DC chapter of the Harvard Black Alumni Society.
This program is free and open to ArtTable members only.
Members may bring an additional guest for $10. Not a member? Join today!
Please review the below before registering:
Health & Safety
Face masks are optional at this location.
Please note that by registering for this event you consent to have your contact information shared with ArtTable to be used in the event that contact tracing is needed.
Accessibility
Kramers is handicap accessible. Please contact Haley at programs@arttable.org if you have specific accessibility requirements.
If you would like additional information about accessibility or need particular accommodations for this program, please email Haley at programs@arttable.org.
Getting There
Kramers is located at 1517 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Click here for directions from any location. Visit Kramers website for information on getting there by metro or car.
Image: Haili Francis, courtesy of the speaker.
Thank you to ArtTable member Ashley Templeton for organizing this program.
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.
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.
Christine Pfister was born in Switzerland. Upon moving to the United States, she attended Christie’s Education at Christie’s in New York, NY, and has been the Co-Owner and Director of Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, PA since 1995.
