Allison Agsten is Curator of Public Engagement and Director of Visitor Services at the Hammer Museum. In her role, she collaborates with artists to develop a new paradigm for the museum experience. Recent projects include the installation of a lending library and used bookstore into the Hammer’s lobby gallery as well an examination of security guard labor and uniforms.Formerly, Agsten was Director of Communications at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she spearheaded a number of projects related to accessibility including a first-of-its kind program to make rare LACMA publications available for free online and a curated online photo contest that garnered entries from across the globe.  Prior to joining to LACMA, Agsten was a producer in CNN’s Los Angeles bureau where she regularly covered the arts.

Jessica Gogan is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the University of Pittsburgh and independent curator and educator working in the US and Brazil. Currently, she co-coordinates the Experimental Nucleus of Education & Art at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and recently completed an evaluation of the pedagogic project of the 8th Mercosul Biennal, Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2010 she curated an exhibition by Brazilian artist José Rufino at The Andy Warhol Museum and co-coordinated educational initiatives for the exhibition Hélio Oiticica: Museum is the World. Her article “Museum as Artist: Creative, Dialogic and Civic Practice” reflects on aspects of her former work as Director of Education at The Andy Warhol Museum.

Chelsea Haines is a writer and curator based in New York, where she is the Education & Public Programs Manager at Independent Curators International. She is also Associate Editor of The Exhibitionist, a journal on exhibition-making published by Archive Books, and is currently editing the Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics: Redefining Ethics for the Twenty-First Century Museum, with Janet Marstine and Alexander Bauer. This volume, targeted towards students of curatorial practice, addresses key ethical questions in museum policy and practice, particularly as related to issues of collection and display. She holds a B.A. in Art History and English Literature from Duquesne University, an M.A. in Visual Culture Theory from New York University, and is entering the PhD program in Art History at The Graduate Center in fall 2012.

Sofía Olascoaga works in the intersections between art and education by activating spaces for critical thinking and collective action. Olascoaga was a Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in 2010 and prior to that received her BFA from La Esmeralda National School of Fine Arts in Mexico City. From 2007 to 2010, Olascoaga was Head of Education and Public Programs at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, where she founded Estudio Abierto, an interdisciplinary programming platform that challenges event formats and museum’s relationship to its communities. She was educational advisor and public program manager for the first grant initiative Bancomer-MACG Program for Young Artists in 2008-2010.

Olascoaga’s curatorial projects include sustained collaborations with educational initiatives such as Art21 (NY) and with a range of universities in Mexico; as well as En Conjunto: ¿Grupos, Colectivos o Colaboraciones? (Working Together: On groups, collectives and collaborations) in 2006, on a series of think-tanks and a subsequent publication on collective artistic practice featuring over 25 Mexican artists’ collectives from the 1970s to the date. She is a recipient of the Mexican National Arts and Culture Fund Grant for Young Artists FONCA (2010).