Zak Risinger

Zak Risinger is an independent curator and cultural member of the Cherokee Nation who has consulted museums throughout the United States and Canada on best practices to engage audiences with Indigenous art and artifacts. He has worked extensively with the MET, American Museum of Natural History, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. While serving as the New York City Creative Manager for Museum Hack, he curated countless specially crafted museum experiences reimagining existing museum collections through the lens of a multitude of varied topics including: adversity, leadership, sex, magic, teamwork, feminism, LGBTQIA culture, and true crime. He has served as a Curatorial Fellow at The Kupferberg Holocaust Center where he curated educational material and crafted programming facilitating conversations illuminating the contemporary Native experience and the ramifications of centuries of violence and genocide leveraged against Indigenous people in North America. Zak has also served as a DEI consultant for theatrical productions on Broadway where works to educate the company and craft meaningful, unique land acknowledgments which utilize themes and/or specific content from the productions and incite specific calls to action. He holds a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre from The University of Oklahoma and a M.A. in Museum Studies through a partnership with CUNY and The New-York Historical Society, focusing on Diversity and Inclusion of Voices.