The pioneering MFA in Curatorial Practice at MICA — the first of its kind in the US — is a hotbed of invention. Its students deliberately seek alternative models of exhibition-building, with the goal to better engage audiences and expand the roles curators play in their communities, and with a deliberate eye on social justice. Alumni from the program have gone on to meet that challenge, and in Baltimore, they’re considered some of the city’s most noteworthy creative leaders.
Several of the program’s alumni as well as a MICA faculty member were recently profiled in The New Art Examiner, which lauded their “union of cultural and intellectual scope, ethical awareness, and inexhaustible commitment to their causes.” Below is a listing of the curators and faculty featured within the story.
Cultural Architects
Curators From MICA are Enriching – and Redefining – Their Field
TIFFANY AUTTRIANNA WARD ’20
(CURATORIAL PRACTICE MFA)
DEYANE MOSES ’19, ’21
(PHOTOGRAPHY BFA, CURATORIAL PRACTICE MFA)
BABETTE PENDLETON ’21
(CURATORIAL PRACTICE MFA)
IMANI Y. HAYNES ’20
(CURATORIAL PRACTICE MFA)
DULCINA ABREU ’21
(CURATORIAL PRACTICE MFA)
JOSEPH ORZAL ’19
(CURATORIAL PRACTICE MFA)
JOY DAVIS
ADJUNCT FACULTY, ART HISTORY
Another MICA alum, Ashley Minner ’05, ’11 (General Fine Arts BFA, Community Arts MFA), recently began her tenure as an assistant curator for history and culture at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. The Smithsonian’s first curator from the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, she was previously inaugural director of the minor in public humanities at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a role she took on after earning a PhD in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Considered a powerful voice for the Lumbee, Minner is also an exhibiting artist, and much of her work chronicles the experience of the tribe. Her honors include a Soros Foundation Open Society Institute Community Fellowship, as well as the American Folklore Society’s Polly Grimshaw Prize for her archival research in collaboration with Lumbee elders in Baltimore.
Read more at The Smithsonian website.