SHARON M. LOUDEN
Sharon M. Louden is an artist, educator, editor and advocate for artists. She graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Drawing Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Weisman Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Louden's work is held in major public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Arkansas Arts Center, Yale University Art Gallery, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.
Her work has also been written about in the New York Times, Art in America, Washington Post, Sculpture Magazine, ARTnews and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as other publications. She has participated in residencies at Tamarind Institute, Urban Glass, Franconia Sculpture Park, Society of the Four Arts and Art Omi.
Louden is also the editor of "Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists" published by Intellect Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. The book is currently in its 5th printing. A 62-stop book tour which started on November 2, 2013 and concluded on May 29, 2015 included Sharon Louden and other contributors visiting cities across the United States. Highlights include events in the Salon at the Art Basel Miami Beach Art Fair, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, LACMA, the 92nd Street Y, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, The Strand Book Store, MICA and many more stops across the country.
Louden is currently working on a second book entitled, "The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life" which will also be published by Intellect Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press in February 2017, followed by a national book tour in the same year. In addition, she is active on boards and committees of various not-for-profit art organizations and volunteers her time to artists to further their careers. Sharon is also a consultant for the Joan Mitchell Foundation, advising their grantees, and conducts webinars for Creative Capital Foundation.
For more information about Sharon Louden and her work, please visit her website: www.sharonlouden.com.
JENNIFER FARRELL
Jennifer Farrell, has recently been appointed Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a scholar and curator who has a long history of working at institutions throughout New York and New England.Ms. Farrell comes to the Metropolitan Museum from overseeing the exhibitions department and curating exhibitions of contemporary art at the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia. Before that, she was director of the New York-based Nancy Graves Foundation, which maintains the archive of the late sculptor, printmaker, and painter Nancy Graves and makes grants to artists. Before joining the Nancy Graves Foundation, Ms. Farrell served as a senior fellow and then assistant curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. The newly appointed curator’s previous curatorial credits includes “Empire/State: Artists Engaging Globalization,” which she co-curated while enrolled in the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2002, Suzanne McClelland, Found Poems from a Lost Time by Suzanne McClelland, Jasper Johns: Early Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, Postwar British Prints, and Vinland: Recent Work by Cindy Bernard. She also published “Get there First and Decide Promptly” : the Richard Brown Baker Collection of Postwar Art, which received the Frick Collection’s 2013 Sotheby’s Prize for a Distinguished Publication in the History of Collecting in America. Ms. Farrell has a Ph.D. in art history and a certificate in film studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a B.A. in art history from Smith College.
MARI SHAW
Mari Shaw lives in Philadelphia and Berlin. She is an art collector, advisor to artists, active participant in cultural boards and advisory committees, and intellectual property lawyer. She has taught Originality, Art, Law and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania and lectured at various educational and art institutions. She has written on contemporary art and artists, including Thomas Chimes, (Painter and Pataphysician Thomas Chimes, 2014), Candida Höfer, Paul Chan, Emily Cobb, and Marcel Bischoff. She is working to afford art experiences to children in the Philadelphia public schools.
HRAG VARTANIAN
Hrag Vartanian is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic, the award-winning art blogazine based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared in countless publications, and he has been invited as a guest commentator on Al Jazeera, WNYC, KCRW, and other national and international media outlets. In addition to his writing and commentary, he has curated numerous exhibitions, including #TheSocialGraph, which was the first exploration of the evolving landscape of social media art back in 2010. He regularly writes and lectures about performance art, the online art world, street art, and multiculturalism.