2008 Panelist Biographies
Robert H. Browning is the Executive and Artistic Director of the World Music Institute, a not-for-profit organization based in New York that he founded in 1985. Born in Singapore and educated in London, England, he exhibited as a painter and kinetic artist and lectured at various art colleges from 1967 to 1974. He came to New York in 1975 and co-founded the Alternative Center for International Arts (Alternative Museum) where he was Director of Music Programs and Special Projects. He has produced and/or presented more than 1,800 concerts of traditional and contemporary music from around the world in New York over the past thirty-two years. In addition he has co-produced radio series, audio recordings and tours throughout the U.S. by both local and international artists from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe. Browning has served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, New Jersey Arts Council, Massachusetts Cultural Council, New England Foundation For the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Maryland State Arts Council, Arts International, PennPat, ASCAP International Awards and the Jerome Foundation. He has also served as a consultant for various festivals and for Carnegie Hall.
Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Ms. Golden began her career as a curator at the Studio Museum in 1987, before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. While at the Whitney Museum she organized many notable exhibitions, including the watershed 1993 Biennial, directed by Elizabeth Sussman; Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art (1994-95); Bob Thompson: A Retrospective (1998); Heart, Mind, Body, Soul: New Work from the Collection (1998); and Hindsight: Recent Work from the Permanent Collection (1999). After a decade at the Whitney, Ms. Golden worked as Special Projects Curator for renowned contemporary art collectors Peter Norton and Eileen Harris Norton before joining The Studio Museum in Harlem as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs. She worked in this capacity for five years before succeeding Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, the museum’s former Director and President.
At the Studio Museum, Ms. Golden has organized a number of groundbreaking exhibitions, including Kori Newkirk: 1997-2007 (2007-08); Africa Comics (2006-07, with Sandra Federici, Andrea Marchesini Reggiani, and Mary Angela Schroth); Frequency (2005-06, with Christine Y. Kim); Chris Ofili: Afro Muses (2005); harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor (2004); Black Romantic: The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary Art (2002); Freestyle (2001); Glenn Ligon: Stranger (2001); Martin Puryear: The Cane Project (2000); and Isaac Julien: Vagabondia (2000). She has also worked to expand and strengthen the museum’s presence in the local community and the global art world.
She has taught in the art departments at Columbia, Yale, and Cornell Universities and serves on the Graduate Committee at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Ms. Golden is a board member at Creative Time in New York and the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) in London. She serves on the Visiting Committee of the Smith College Museum of Art, acted as a juror for the 2007 Turner Prize, and was a member of the advisory team to the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
Thelma Golden holds a BA in Art History and African-American Studies from Smith College (1987) and honorary degrees from Smith College (DFA 2004), and Moore College of Art and Design (DFA 2003).
Julie Jensen was reared in southern Utah. She has taught playwriting at seven different colleges and universities. She worked as a writer in Hollywood and until recently directed the graduate playwriting program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She is now Resident Playwright at Salt Lake Acting Company. Jensen is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Award for New American Plays (White Money), the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work (The Lost Vegas Series), and the LA Weekly Award for Best New Play (Two-Headed). She has received the McKnight National Playwriting Fellowship (WAIT!), the TCG/NEA Playwriting Residency (WAIT!), and a major grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts (Dust Eaters). Her play, Two-Headed, was included in the volume Best Plays by Women, 2000, and she has twice been nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association for the best new play produced outside of New York (Last Lists of My Mad Mother and Dust Eaters). Recent activities include the premiere of her newest play, Billion Dollar Babyat Salt Lake Acting Company, a special article in American Theatreon Two-Headedwhich was produced at Berkshire Theatre Festival last summer. In addition, Jensen’s playwriting book, Playwriting, Brief and Brillianthas just been published by Smith and Kraus.
Byron Kim is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.A. from Yale University and completed advanced studies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally and throughout the United States. Most recently his work was included in the group exhibition Color Chart, currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A major museum retrospective of Kim’s work, entitled Threshold: Byron Kim 1990-2004 was conceived by independent curator Eugenie Tsai and traveled to various venues that included the Rodin Museum, Seoul Korea; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, among others. His work has been included in several seminal exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial; Skin Deep at the New Museum in New York; Slow Art and The Naked and The Raw at the P.S.1 Museum, Long Island City, New York; and Color Theory at SUNY Old Westbury, New York. He has been represented by Max Protetch Gallery in New York for over 15 years. The artist and his work have been honored by awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York Foundation for the Arts; and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Kim also received a Diverse Forms Artists’ Project grant funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. His work is included in numerous public collections some of which include the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minn. The artist serves as a Commissioner for the New York City Art Commission, and is a Board member of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Kim is currently a Senior Critic for the Yale University Art Department.
Lisa Kron has been writing and performing theater since coming to New York from Michigan in 1984. Her play Well opened to critical acclaim on Broadway at the Longacre Theater in March 2006 and received two Tony nominations. It premiered at the Public Theater in 2004 and was listed among the year’s best plays by the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Newark Star Ledger, Backstage, the Advocate, and is included in the anthology, “Best Plays of 2004-2005.” Her play, 2.5 Minute Ride (OBIE, L.A. Drama-Logue and GLAAD Media Awards, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations, New York Press: Best Of 1999) premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 1996 and at the Public Theater in 1999 and has since been presented all over the world at theaters including the London Barbican, and Japan’s Rinkogun. Kron’s other plays include 101 Humiliating Stories (Drama Desk nom.), Charity and Montecore (2006 Humana Festival, New York Fringe), and 43/13 (Dad’s Garage, Atlanta). Kron is a founding member of the OBIE and Bessie Award–winning theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers, whose plays Oedipus at Palm Springs, Brave Smiles, Brides of the Moonand The Secretaries have all been produced by New York Theater Workshop and performed widely throughout the country both by the Brothers and by other companies. As an actress Lisa has appeared Off-Broadway in Spain, The Normal Heart, Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell, and The Vagina Monologues. As a playwright her honors include fellowships from the Lortel and Guggenheim Foundations, an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Fellowship, the Cal Arts/Alpert Award, and grants from the Creative Capital Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts. Kron teaches playwriting at Yale Drama School. She is also working on a new play for L.A.’s Center Theater Group on the state of American democracy.
Marsha MacDowell is the Curator of Folk Arts, Michigan State University Museum and Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Michigan State University.Working as a publicly-engaged scholar, MacDowell has largely focused on the documentation and analysis of the production, meaning, and use of traditional material culture (especially that of Hmong-Americans, Native Americans, South Africans, and women); the analysis of the role of museums in contemporary society; the development of educational resources and public arts policies related to traditional arts; the development of curriculum materials related to community-based knowledge; and the creation of innovative ways, including digital repositories, to increase access to and use of traditional arts materials. Current major activities include the development of the NEH-funded The Quilt Index (www.quiltindex.org), a national "Quilt Treasures" oral history project, the Great Lakes Quilt Center, the Great Lakes Folk Festival (www.greatlakesfolkfest.net), and the exhibition "Carriers of Culture: Contemporary Native Baskets." MacDowell also serves as the state folklorist, managing the Michigan Traditional Arts Program - a partnership program with Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the Michigan University Extension Service. Publications include those on African American quiltmaking, Native American quiltmaking, Michigan traditional artists, Hmong textiles, museum education, craft-based cultural economic development, and folk arts in education.
Robert O’Hara received a 2006 OBIE Award for his Direction of In the Continuum. He wrote and directed the World Premiere of Insurrection: Holding History at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, the piece received the Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Play and was subsequently published by both Theater Communications Group and an Acting Edition by Dramatist Play Service. His plays have been produced around the world and he has been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, TCG Extended Collaboration Grant, NEA/TCG Fellowship, a Van Lier Fellow at New Dramatists, recipient of the First Mark Taper Forum's Sherwood Award, and the TANNE Award for Exceptional Body of Work. Mr. O’Hara has directed at New York Shakespeare Festival, Primary Stages, Yale Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Kirk Douglas Theater (CTG), American Conservatory Theater, Magic Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Edinburgh Fringe Fest, The Market Theater in Johannesburg, The Baxter Theater in Cape Town, The Culture Project, The Flea, Athenaeum Theater, Philadelphia Theater Company, The Goodman Theater and The Perry Street Theater. He has been an Artist in Residence at the American Conservatory Theater, New York Shakespeare Festival, and Theater/Emory as well as a Visiting Professor at DePaul University School of the Arts. The Mark Taper Forum, the National Endowment of the Arts, The McCarter Theater, Theatre de Nimes, Le Theatre l’Odeon, Theaterworks/USA and Theater/Emory, and LaJolla Playhouse have all commissioned him. He has written for Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Avnet/Kerner, HBO, ABC, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, New Line/Fine Line Cinema and Artisan Entertainment. His new play Antebellum will be given its World Premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theater. He recently completed work on the revival of The Wiz directed by Des McAnuff.
Halifu Osumare has been involved with dance and theatre internationally for over thirty years as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, administrator and scholar. She holds a M.A. in Dance Ethnology from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is currently Associate Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis. Asa dancer in the 1970s, she was a soloist with the Rod Rodgers Dance Co. of New York City, and she is noted particularly as a Director/Choreographer with the works of her friend poet/playwright, Ntozake Shange. She has also choreographed for San Francisco’s American Conservative Theater, including Pecong that won the Bay Area Drama Critics Circle Award for choreography in 1993. Dr. Osumare is the Founder of CitiCentre Dance Theatre of Oakland, and also the Founder of the national dance initiative Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century (1989-1995). Her vision of the arts, like her late mentor Katherine Dunham, is their relevance to, and total involvement in, the humanities. This vision informs her many publications on dance and hip-hop culture in academic journals and anthologies, as well as in her book published by Palgrave Macmillan, The Africanist Aesthetic in the Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves (2007).
Amy Sillman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and in Tivoli, NY. Her work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries in the US and Europe, most recently at The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, where her solo show Third Person Singular currently runs until July 6th, 2008; and in 2009 Paint Made Flesh will be exhibited at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville, TN. Venues for her most recent solo exhibitions include carlier|gebauer, Berlin; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; and Susanne Vielmetter LA Projects, Culver City, CA. The artist’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, some of which include The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, CA; The Triumph of Painting, Saatchi Gallery, London UK; ICA Ramp Project, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia PA; and the Whitney Biennial. Sillman and her work have been honored by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation; the Joan Mitchell Foundation; the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Sillman was recently awarded a Residency Fellowship at The American Academy in Berlin for the spring of 2009. Her work is in numerous public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Art, Boston; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Baltimore Museum of Art. She is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; and carlier|gebauer in Berlin. Sillman is the Co-Chair of Painting at the Bard MFA Program, and an adjunct faculty member in the MFA Program at Columbia University. Recent publications include "Amy Sillman—Works on Paper," published in 2006 by Gregory R. Miller & Co, NY, and "Amy Sillman/Gregg Bordowitz" published in 2007 by A.R.T. Press in their Between Artists series.
Kay Turner became Director of the Brooklyn Arts Council’s (BAC) folk arts program, BAC FolkArts, in October 2000. Turner works with Brooklyn traditional artists practicing in a range of disciplines—music, dance, material arts, narrative and foodways. Since coming to BAC, Turner has initiated a number of field research based projects resulting in programs such as Praise in the Park: Musical Expressions of Faith, Local Eyes: Folk Photographers in Brooklyn, Williamsburg Bridge 100th Anniversary Celebration, and Folk Feet: Celebrating Traditional Dance in Brooklyn. In September 2006 she curated Here Was New York: Twin Towers in Memorial Images and in September 2007 “ September 11th Remembered in Film.” She recently finished producing Brooklyn Maqam: Arab Music Festival, a major presentation project on Arab music traditions in Brooklyn, held in venues throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan in March 2008.
Turner also teaches courses on gender, theory of time and performance, ghosts and their ontology, and oral narrative theory in the Performance Studies Graduate Program at New York University. She holds the Ph.D. in Folklore and Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin. Among her publications are Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars (Thames and Hudson), an extended treatment of her dissertation. Turner’s essay “September 11 and the Burden of the Ephemeral” is slated for publication in 2009 and she is working on a new book project “Transgressive Tales: Reinterpreting the Grimms Through Queer Perspectives.” Dr. Turner is a co-founder of Texas Folklife Resources (TFR), one of the first not-for-profit folk arts organizations in the United States. She was Associate Director of that organization from 1985-1991. During her tenure at TFR Dr. Turner co-curated “Art Among Us/ Arte Entre Nosotros: Mexican American Folk Art of San Antonio;” “ Hecho Tejano: Six Mexican-American Sculptors,” and “Handmade and Heartfelt: Folk Art of Texas;” she presented music traditions ranging from conjunto to gospel.
Lynn Zelevansky is Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head, Contemporary Art, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She oversaw the installation of the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, and the publication that accompanies it (2008). She is currently preparing exhibitions on contemporary Korean art (2009) and on the U.S. artist Paul Thek (2011, with Elizabeth Sussman, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). She will be coordinating curator for a major exhibition of work by the Brazilian artist, Cildo Meireles, organized by the Tate Gallery, London (2009). In 2004, Zelevansky organized Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s – 70s, which opened at LACMA in June, 2004 and traveled to the Miami Art Museum. It was named "Best Thematic Exhibition Nationally" by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and Best Exhibition in the Pacific Time Zone by the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) both for 2003-04. She co-organized Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons: Four Decades of Art from the Broad Collections (2001-03 with Stephanie Barron, LACMA) and Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-68 (1998-99 with Laura Hoptman, MoMA). She curated Contemporary Projects 7: Keith Edmier and Farrah Fawcett (2002); Robert Therrien (2000-01); Contemporary Projects: Longing and Memory (1997); and Mexican Masterpieces from the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection (1997). Zelevansky was coordinating curator for Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution and Picasso: Masterworks from the Museum of Modern Art. Prior to coming to Los Angeles early in 1995, Zelevansky was a member of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. While there she organized Sense and Sensibility: Women Artists and Minimalism in the Nineties (1994) and Projects shows presenting the work of Meireles (1990), Guillermo Kuitca (1991), Suzanne Lafont (1992), Gabriel Orozco (1993), and others. In 1995, she was awarded a Peter Norton Family Foundation Curator's Grant for the acquisition of contemporary works at LACMA. She has published widely on modern and contemporary art.