Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

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Chicago Curatorial Seminar 2023

Clockwise from top left: John H. Guevara, Isra Rene, Mariela Acuña, Denny Mwaura (Photo: Derek Holland), Inés Arango-Guingue, Dawn Johnson, and Paula Volpato.

Sep 9, 2023 – Dec 16, 2023

Chicago, IL, USA

Clockwise from top left: John H. Guevara, Isra Rene, Mariela Acuña, Denny Mwaura (Photo: Derek Holland), Inés Arango-Guingue, Dawn Johnson, and Paula Volpato.

ICI's Curatorial Seminar is a free, eight-session professional development program that supports emerging curators advance their capacity to establish a strong first-person approach to curating, support overlooked artists, and engage with local art communities while working outside of a large institution. This unique program offers opportunities to gain knowledge and resources through ICI’s network, share ideas, and think through developments in one's own curatorial practice. Through this process, the Seminar seeks to build an affirming network of peers who connect around shared values, and support the sharing of knowledge among early-career curators.

In the 2023 Chicago Curatorial Seminar, seven Chicago-based BIPOC curators will meet bi-monthly from September to December 2023 for discussion-based seminars—led by ICI staff, guest curators, artists, and arts professionals—and shared reading. Over the course of the seminar, each participant will also workshop a proposal for an exhibition or similar project and receive individual feedback from hand-selected mentors, who provide a unique perspective on the participant's curatorial practice. The group will also participate in curator-led site visits across Chicago at Rhona Hoffman Gallery with Julia Birka-White, Archive House with Barédu Ahmed, Edith Farnsworth House with Alberto Ortega, and The Renaissance Society with Karsten Lund.


Credits
The Chicago Curatorial Seminar is made possible by Joyce Foundation, with additional support from Teiger Foundation.

 

Participants
Mariela Acuña

Mariela Acuña is an art administrator, curator, and occasional weaver from San José, Costa Rica, currently based in Chicago.

Inés Arango-Guingue

Inés Arango-Guingue is a Colombian curator and writer whose work centers on artists from Latin America and its diasporas.

John H. Guevara

John H. Guevara is a curator, art worker, and emerging art writer raised and based in Chicago.

Dawn Johnson

Dawn Johnson is a native of Chicago’s South Side and an emerging historian and curator.

Denny Mwaura

Denny Mwaura is a curator-writer based in Chicago.

Isra Rene

Isra Rene is an artist and writer from Capitol Heights, Maryland, currently based in Chicago.

Paula Volpato

Paula Volpato (she/her) is a Brazilian curator and arts organizer, trained as an architect and based in Chicago.

Faculty and Mentors
Rachel Adams

Rachel Adams is the Chief Curator and Director of Programs at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

Esteban King Álvarez

Esteban King Álvarez (México City, 1986) is researcher, art historian and curator.

Jordan Amirkhani

Dr. Jordan Amirkhani is Curator of Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought—a non-profit institute for research, publishing, and exhibitions of contemporary art based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Ionit Behar

Ionit Behar is the Assistant Curator at DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), Chicago, and the co-founder and co-director of BeharXSchachman, a Chicago based curatorial and exhibition design agency.

Julia Birka-White

Julia Birka-White is Director at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.

Stephanie Cristello

Stephanie Cristello (b. Toronto, Canada) is a critic and independent curator living and working in Chicago, IL.

Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas

Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas is the Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. 

Ashley Janke

Ashley Janke is the Assistant Curator at Wrightwood 659.

Ross Jordan

Ross Jordan is Curatorial Manager at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago, IL.

Karsten Lund

Karsten Lund is Senior Curator at the Renaissance Society, Chicago.

Srimoyee Mitra

Srimoyee Mitra is a curator and writer whose work is invested in building empathy and mutual respect by bringing together meaningful and diverse works of art and design.

Alberto Ortega

Alberto Ortega-Trejo is a Mexican artist and architectural researcher based in Chicago, USA and Pachuca, Mexico.

Risa Puleo

Risa Puleo is an independent curator and one of a team of curators organizing the 2023 Counterpublics Triennial in St. Louis.

Stephanie Seidel

Stephanie Seidel is a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami).

Jodi Throckmorton

Jodi Throckmorton is Chief Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

Leslie Wilson

Leslie M. Wilson is Associate Director for Academic Engagement and Research at the Art Institute of Chicago.