Chicago Curatorial Seminar 2025

In the 2025 Chicago Curatorial Seminar, eight emerging curators from across the Chicago area met over eight sessions for discussion-based seminars and site visits across Chicago led by ICI staff, guest curators, artists, and arts professionals. The first session was hosted by Wisdom Baty and Alyssa Hyde Martinez of Wild Yams: Black Mothers Artist Residency, an artist residency designed to provide artist mothers and caretakers with time, space, and resources needed to sustain and nurture creative practices. Site visits throughout the Seminar included a tour of The Neubauer Collegium led by Dieter Roelstrate, a visit to Mariane Ibrahim Gallery with Emma McKee and Jenna Washington, and a trip to The Renaissance Society that included a seminar with Karsten Lund. Participants also extensively workshopped proposals for projects and received individual advisement from mentors in ICI's network, culminating in a presentation session for a group of invited guests at Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC).

About the Curatorial Seminar

ICI's Curatorial Seminar is a free professional development program that supports emerging curators to advance their practice. It centers a first-person approach to curating, and focuses on strengthening curatorial practices that 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 common values, and support the sharing of knowledge among early-career curators.

The Chicago Curatorial Seminar is made possible by the Joyce Foundation, with additional support from Teiger Foundation and the ICI Board of Trustees.

Participants

Carol Bedoy

Carol Bedoy is a curator raised between Chicago and Aguascalientes.

I-Chien Chen

I-Chien Chen is a Taipei-born curator and artist currently based in the U.S.

tiffany m johnson

tiffany m johnson is a research-based curator, memory worker, and budding land steward passionate about community building through imaginative, underground, and cooperative practices.

Onyinyechi Jessica Ogwumike

Onyinyechi Jessica Ogwumike is a Nigerian American curator, community health worker, and researcher whose spacemaking mission is anchored in fostering Black queer wellbeing.

Chris D. Reeder

Believing in the capacity of art and social praxis to reveal truths about erasure through curatorial-community engagement, Chris D. Reeder's work fosters critical inquiry and historical empathy.

Maya Ortiz Saucedo

Maya Ortiz Saucedo is a curator, artist, and researcher whose practice is rooted in the critique of the adoption industrial complex and the intersections and remnants of generation spaces and histories of diaspora.

Marvin Veloso

Marvin Veloso is a Chicago-based "visual criticologist" whose work engages the intersections of environmental humanities, visual culture, and queer affect.

Yue Xu

Yue Xu is a Chicago-based artist and curator whose work emerges from survival strategies shaped by migration and the conditions of the present, where identity often dictates visibility and belonging.

Faculty and Mentors

Sam Adams

Sam Adams is the Ellen Johnson '33 Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.

Noor Alé

Noor Alé is the Associate Curator at the Moody Center for the Arts, where she works on exhibitions, public programs, and acquisitions for the Rice Public Art collection.

Wisdom Baty

Wisdom Baty (she/her/hers) is an artist, mother/caretaker, curator, and arts administrator.

Jessica Bell Brown

Jessica Bell Brown is Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Antawan I. Byrd

Antawan I. Byrd is the Weinberg Fellow at Northwestern University, Chicago, IL.

Taylor Bythewood-Porter

Taylor Bythewood-Porter is a curator and writer, and currently serves as Director of Exhibitions at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California.

Jadine Collingwood

Jadine Collingwood is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Robyn Farrell

Robyn Farrell is Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Kitchen in New York.

Nadiah Rivera Fellah

Nadiah Rivera Fellah is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Amber Ginsburg

Amber Ginsburg is a Lecturer at the University of Chicago, Department of Visual Arts.

Julieta González

Julieta González is Head of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio and Curator-at-large for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo.

Essence Harden

Essence Harden is the curator of Expo Chicago 2026, the co-curator of Made in LA, 2025, at The Hammer Museum, and curator of the Focus section for Frieze LA, 2024 - 2026.

Karsten Lund

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

Alyssa Martinez

Alyssa Martinez is an independent artist, cultural producer, and arts administrator, and program director at WILD YAMS: Black Mother Artist Residency.

Emma McKee

Emma McKee the Director of Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City) and is based in Chicago.

Allison Peters Quinn

Allison Peters Quinn (she/her) is the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Elmhurst Art Museum.

Pavel Pyś

Pavel S. Pyś is Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center.

Dieter Roelstraete

Dieter Roelstraete is the curator at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago.

TK Smith

TK Smith is an Atlanta-based curator, writer, and cultural historian.

Tricia Van Eck

Tricia Van Eck is Artistic Director of 6018North in Chicago.