Panel discussion presented by UArts Museums Forum
April 17, 2024, 6pm
From Me to We: Curating Collective History through Solo Retrospectives. Presented by UArts’ Museum Studies MA program: Join the next generation of changemakers in the museum field.
This panel brings together curators who have recently organized career-spanning retrospectives of women artists. Though these exhibitions celebrate under-recognized artists’ individual bodies of work, they also make space for materials documenting their participation in arts communities. By making connections with their peers and influences, these curatorial projects introduce viewers to the larger arts ecosystem that has supported these artists’ work prior to institutional representation.
Panelists include Cindy Kang, Curator, The Barnes Foundation: Speaking about Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris (2023–24); Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum: Speaking about the Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And retrospective (2021); Laura Phipps, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art: Speaking about Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map (2023); Lilia Rocio Taboada, Curatorial Assistant in Department of Media and Performance, MoMA: Speaking about Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces (2022–23); with moderator Brittany Webb, Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth-Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: Framing the discussion and reflecting on co-curated Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale (2020–21).
RSVP by April 10 to reserve your spot. This is a free in-person event. This event is organized by the UArts Museums Forum, a new program series for the field; it is also part of (re)FOCUS 2024. Learn more about the festival’s complete programming.
About the panelists
Cindy Kang is curator at the Barnes Foundation. A specialist in modern European art, she particularly focuses on the relationship between painting and decorative arts in late 19th- and early 20th-century France. At the Barnes, she co-curated Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris (2023–24); curated Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray (2020); and served as the venue curator for the Barnes presentations of Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist (2018–19) and Renoir: Father and Son/Painting and Cinema (2018). Additionally, she commissioned the exhibition Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community (2022), and co-led the institution’s land acknowledgment process. Before joining the Barnes in 2017, Dr. Kang held curatorial and research positions at the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Bard Graduate Center, and was a scholar-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute. She earned her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Catherine Morris is the Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum where, since 2009, she has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions including Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And; We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985; Judith Scott: Bound & Unbound; and Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art. She has worked on projects that examine contemporary practices through historical precedents, including the museum-wide Sackler Center ten-year anniversary project, The Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism at the Brooklyn Museum, and two collection-based exhibitions: Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection and Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection.
Laura Phipps is an assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has been at the Whitney since 2009, and her recent projects include Virginia Overton: Sculpture Gardens; Open Plan: Andrea Fraser; and a group show of emerging artists titled Flatlands. She has also co-curated a project with Michele Abeles and the permanent collection exhibition Test Pattern. Phipps has assisted with numerous museum exhibitions, including 2010; the Whitney Biennial; Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection; Glenn Ligon: AMERICA; Singular Visions; Wade Guyton OS; Sinister Pop, and Jeff Koons: A Retrospective. She has served on the grant selection committee of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation; as a visiting critic for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace and Smackmellon Studio Program; and as a guest curator at the Kentler Drawing Center, Brooklyn. Prior to the Whitney, Phipps worked in the curatorial department and director’s office of the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth. She earned her MA in Art History from Hunter College, CUNY; her BFA in Studio Art; and a BS in Psychology from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.
Lilia Rocio Taboada is a curator and writer who specializes in collective and archival artistic practices since 1945. She is curatorial assistant in the Department of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where she is working on the forthcoming exhibition and publication Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning, organized by Ana Janevski, curator, and previously co-organized Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, with T. Jean Lax, curator; Linda Goode Bryant, Just Above Midtown Gallery founder; and Marielle Ingram. She completed her MA in the Department of Art History at the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on African American and Latinx art histories. She has previously held positions in the Education Department at the Hammer Museum and Curatorial Departments at the Blanton Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she was an inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellow.
Dr. Brittany Webb is the Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Dr. Webb co-curated Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale (2020–21) at PAFA and her most recent exhibition, Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden, is a retrospective featuring 70 sculptures by artist John Rhoden (1916–2001). The latter is on view at PAFA through April 7, 2024. Before joining PAFA, Dr. Webb was a member of the curatorial staff of the African American Museum in Philadelphia. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Temple University and a BA in Political Science from the University of Southern California.
