Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Panel Biographies 2009 Adam D. Weinberg (Panel Chair) Alice Pratt Brown Director Whitney Museum of American Art Romi Crawford Assistant Professor School of the Art Institute of Chicago James Elaine Artist and Adjunct Curator Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA Anne Ellegood Senior Curator Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA Malik Gaines Writer and Artist Los Angeles, CA Francesca Herndon-Consagra Senior Curator Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, MO Anne Pasternak President and Artistic Director Creative Time, New York City Namita Gupta Wiggers Curator Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR Panel Biographies Adam D. Weinberg (panel chair) has been the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art since October 2003.  Previously, Mr. Weinberg was the Mary Stripp and R. Crosby Kemper Director, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, from 1999 to 2003. At the Addison, he set the institutional vision for one of the country’s leading museums of American art, building the collection, developing the exhibition program, and overseeing the museum’s publications and artist-in-residence program. Mr. Weinberg began his career in 1981 at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis.  He left his post there as Director of Education and Assistant Curator in 1989 to join the Whitney for the first time as Director of the Whitney branch at the Equitable Center at 52nd Street and Seventh Avenue.  Mr. Weinberg then moved to the American Center in Paris where he was Artistic and Program Director from 1990 to 1992. In 1993, Mr. Weinberg returned to the Whitney as Curator of the Permanent Collection; he became Senior Curator and Curator of the Permanent Collection in 1998. Mr. Weinberg has been responsible for several key acquisitions for the Whitney Museum, including sculptures by Elie Nadelman, photographs by Weegee, drawings by Sol LeWitt, and multimedia work by Jessica Stockholder.  Mr. Weinberg has also helped organize numerous shows, such as “Edward Hopper and the American Imagination”, “Isamu Noguchi: Early Abstraction”, and “Views From Abroad: European Perspectives on American Art.” Mr. Weinberg received his B.A. in Art History and Education from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, and an M.F.A. in Museum Studies and Photography History from the State University of New York at Buffalo, New York. Return to Top Romi Crawford is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was previously the Curator and Director of Education and Public Programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and from 2000 to 2006 she was Director of the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Crawford founded the Crawford and Sloan Gallery, where she curated exhibits such as "Group Retrospective: Selected African-American Photographers 1973-1993" and "Urban Style Politics." Her research revolves primarily around the topic of race and its relation to American visual and popular culture. Over the years she has received several grants to conduct research on the 19th-century Native American and African American sculptress Edmonia Lewis and her work on early 20th-century African American and Jewish “race films” has led to a broader consideration of en-ghettoed art practice in the U.S. She has published in Art Journal, Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Film and Video Artists, Black Light/White Noise: Sound and Light in Contemporary Art and Frequency. She currently sits on the Exhibition and Diversity Practices Committees for the College Art Association. Return to Top James Elaine is an artist and adjunct curator for the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. From 1999 to 2008 he was the Hammer Projects curator. In this capacity, he curated or oversaw more than 80 solo projects and 3 large survey exhibitions for emerging artists, “Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles”, “International Paper: Drawings By Emerging Artists”, and the latest, “THING: New Sculpture from Los Angeles,” which won the International Art Critics Association’s award for best thematic museum show of the year in 2005. His films, drawings, paintings, and installations have been included in national and international film festivals, and museum and gallery exhibitions. Elaine is a recent recipient of an Asia Cultural Council research travel grant and the winner of the 2008 Ordway Prize for his lifetime curatorial work at the Drawing Center in New York City and the Hammer Museum. In the spring of 2008, he moved to Beijing where he is researching China’s emerging culture and art scene for the next several years. Return to Top Anne Ellegood was recently named Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Prior to the new position, she had been the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. from 2005 to April 2009. Before joining the Hirshhorn, she was the New York-based curator for Peter Norton’s collection, an ambitious private collection of over 2400 works of international contemporary art in all media. From 1998 to 2003, she was the Associate Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Ellegood organized several noteworthy exhibitions for the Hirshhorn, including solo shows with Jim Lambie, Amy Sillman and Terence Gower, and thematic shows including “The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas: Recent Sculpture” and “Realisms.” Co-organized with Kirsten Hileman “Realisms” was the second half of a two-part exhibition, “The Cinema Effect: Reality, Illusion, and the Moving Image,” that examined artists’ depictions of the overlaps between reality and fiction in moving image works. Ellegood has contributed texts to a number of catalogues and written for such publications as Artforum and Art Press. She received her Master of Arts degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and has taught at Bard’s CCS, Rhode Island School of Design, School of Visual Arts, and George Washington University. Return to Top Malik Gaines is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles.  Gaines has contributed art criticism and journalism to publications including The Advocate, ArtUS, Art Papers, Art Review, Artforum and Frieze.  He has written catalogue essays for the Studio Museum in Harlem, the 1st Moscow Biennial, the UCLA Hammer Museum, Secession in Vienna, and others, and has provided monograph texts for artists including Glenn Ligon and Wangechi Mutu.  Gaines has worked as a curator to organize exhibitions including “Fade: African American Artists in Los Angeles” (2004) for the City of LA, “Effacé” (2006) at Steve Turner Gallery, Beverly Hills, “Read Me! Text in Art” (2007) at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, as well as “Kalup Linzy: All My Churen” (2006), “Talks About Acts” (2007), and “Anna Sew Hoy: Pow” (2008) at LAXART, where Gaines is Adjunct Curator.  In 2003, Gaines received a Penny McCall Foundation Award for his work as a critic and curator.  Gaines is a member of the performance art collective My Barbarian, which performs internationally. The group was included in the 2005 and 2007 Performa Biennials, the 2006 and 2008 California Biennials, and the 2007 Montreal Biennial. Gaines received a B.A. in History from UCLA (1996) and an MFA in Writing from Cal Arts’ School of Critical Studies (1999) and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA, which he expects to complete in 2010. Return to Top Francesca Herndon-Consagra is Senior Curator of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, where she organizes exhibitions for a sanctuary space designed by Tadao Ando. The Pulitzer Foundation presents changing exhibitions of both contemporary and historical art and engages in a variety of programming initiatives involving the visual, literary, and performing arts. Herndon-Consagra is presently planning exhibitions on Gordon Matta-Clark, Ann Hamilton, and Joseph Beuys, as well as one devoted to the image of the Buddha.  Prior to her tenure at the Pulitzer, she spent eight years as the Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Saint Louis Art Museum. She organized numerous exhibitions with accompanying catalogues on such themes as Rembrandt’s prints, botanical illustration, and contemporary German drawings.  She also helped design a new study room and storage facility for the Museum. Herndon-Consagra graduated with a Ph.D. in Art History from The Johns Hopkins University.  Her dissertation studied the print industry of 17th-century Rome. She has held fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and has worked as the research associate to Henry A. Millon, Dean of Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the NGA.  Before moving to St. Louis, she was the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Lecturer in the Art Department at Vassar College.  Her earlier publications include essays on print publishing, Pietro Testa, and British drawings. Return to Top Anne Pasternak, the President and Artistic Director of Creative Time, NYC, joined the organization in the fall of 1994, with the goal of presenting some of the most adventurous art in the public realm. Creative Time has been commissioning and presenting innovative art in New York City since 1972, introducing millions of people every year to contemporary art while making sure it plays an active role in public life. Under Pasternak’s direction, renowned projects have ranged from exhibitions and performances in the historic Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, sculptural installations in Grand Central Station’s Vanderbilt Hall, sign paintings in Coney Island and skywriting over Manhattan to the Tribute in Light, the twin beacons of light that illuminated the former World Trade Center site six months after 9/11.  Pasternak has been committed to initiating projects that give artists opportunities to innovate their practice, preserve public space as a place of creative expression, and respond to timely issues.  Over the past decade, she has worked closely with such artists as Doug Aitken, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Jenny Holzer, Gary Hume, Vik Muniz, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Steve Powers, Cai Guo Qiang, and many more. In addition to her work at Creative Time, Pasternak curates independent exhibitions, consults on urban planning initiatives, and contributes essays to cultural publications. She lectures extensively throughout the United States and Europe, and she served as a guest critic at Yale University and continues to teach at the School of Visual Arts. Before leading Creative Time, Pasternak studied Art History at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst as an undergraduate, and pursued her Masters in Art History at Hunter College in NYC. Return to Top Namita Gupta Wiggers is Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, where she leads the exhibition, collection and education programs. Wiggers joined the Museum in 2005, and developed the curatorial vision for the museum during its expansion, relocation and re-opening in July 2007. Wiggers’ curatorial projects include “New Embroidery: Not Your Grandma’s Doily”; The Living Room”; “Touching Warms the Art”; “Generations: Ken Shores”; “GLASS: Melissa Dyne” and “Manuf®actured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects.”  Her CraftPerspectives series has brought Garth Clark, Glenn Adamson and the film Handmade Nation to Portland. With Janet Koplos and Glenn Adamson, Wiggers recently co-authored Unpacking the Collection: Selections from the Museum of Contemporary Craft, the first publication to document the Museum’s collection and its connections to dramatic changes in artistic practice over the past seventy years. Wiggers has served as a panelist for The Pew Fellowships in the Arts (2007) and the Bush Foundation (2008). She has written for such publications as The Journal of Museum Education, Artlies, and Metalsmith. She pursued doctoral studies in art history at The University of Chicago, and holds B.A. degrees in Art History and English from Rice University in Houston. She will continue to develop the Museum’s curatorial vision through a second transition, the integration of the Museum and Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA).  In this process, Wiggers will lead a curatorial program that continues to consider both craft and design in new ways: as subjects, verbs, and as both intersecting and unique practices.