2023 Mary L. Nohl Fellowship Panelists to Give Public Talk at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, November 17

The twentieth cycle of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists program continues with the appointment of a panel of recognized visual arts professionals to select five Fellows from among 157 applicants. Jadine Collingwood, Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Thomas James, Independent Curator and Executive Director, The Last Resort Artist Retreat, Baltimore, Maryland; and Kimi Kitada, Jedel Family Foundation Curatorial Fellow at Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, Missouri will be welcomed at an informal reception on Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 6 pm at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, 839 South 5th Street, Milwaukee, WI 53204. The panelists will offer brief overviews of their home institutions and curatorial interests beginning at 6:30 pm. The event is free but registration is required: https://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/calendar/talks-2023-nohl-jurors

Funded by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund and Joy Engine, and administered by the Lynden, the Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists provide unrestricted funds for artists to create new work or complete work in progress. In addition to receiving an award ($35,000 for each of two Established artists; $15,000 each for the three Emerging artists) and a $5,000 professional development/production budget, the Nohl Fellows can participate in an exhibition at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University opening in June 2024. The eighteen-month fellowship period, January 2023-June 2024, will include professional development opportunities such as studio visits from curators and artists outside the area and occasional public programs. An exhibition catalogue will be published and disseminated nationally. The program is open to practicing artists residing in the four-county area (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties). The program also includes a Suitcase Fund for exporting work by local artists beyond the four-county area.

The panelists will spend two days visiting the studios of twelve finalists: six in the Established Artist category and six Emerging Artists. The awards will be announced in early January 2023.

About the Jurors
Jadine Collingwood is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where she has curated projects including Chicago Works: Caroline Kent (2021), Martine Syms: She Mad Season One (2022), and Gary Simmons: Public Enemy (with René Morales, 2023). Previously, she worked at the Walker Art Center where she was part of the curatorial team for several exhibitions, including the major retrospective Siah Armajani: Follow This Line (with Victoria Sung, 2018), the group exhibition The Body Electric (with Pavel Pyś, 2019), and the multidisciplinary exhibition The Paradox of Stillness (with Vincenzo de Bellis, 2021). Prior to the Walker, Collingwood was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she assisted with the exhibitions Design Episodes: The Modern Chair (2016) and Helena Almeida: Work Is Never Finished (2017). Collingwood received a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago, where she completed her dissertation, ‘A Tragic Suburban Mentality’: Managerial Lyricism in Contemporary Art.

Thomas F. James (b. 1994) is a Washington, DC-born, Prince George’s County, Maryland-raised curator currently based in Baltimore. The focal aspect of his work is to communicate ideas through exhibitions focusing on storytelling. By approaching his curatorial practice as a narrator, he is able to emphasize the cultural backgrounds and nuances within artists’ works. This is done in the hopes to provide viewers with more context and a holistic scope of what artists are presenting. He finds storytelling essential to communicating grander concepts that create approachable, intellectual conversations.

From 2018-2022 James ran two galleries in Baltimore: Creative Alliance and Eubie Blake Cultural Center. He is now the executive director of The Last Resort Artist Retreat, as well as continuing his curatorial practice and serving on various boards and projects for different sectors of the arts ecosystem.

James received his bachelor’s degree from Frostburg State University. He has guest curated numerous exhibitions at institutions including The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; Band of Vice Gallery, Los Angeles; George Washington University’s ArtReach Gallery, Washington, DC; Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, Maryland; and Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, Annapolis, Maryland. He has been a lead facilitator and/or panelist at institutions including Joshua Johnson Council, Baltimore Museum of Art, Reginald F. Lewis Museum, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Bloomberg Arts. He has served as a guest juror and/or critic at institutions including B&O Railroad Museum, Maryland Institute College of Art, University of Maryland College Park, Maryland Federation of Art, Residency Unlimited, VisArts, Goucher College, and Towson University. James has spearheaded special projects with organizations such as Vans, Kaiser Permanente, and Munger, Tolles & Olsen LLP.

Kimi Kitada is a curator based in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently, she is the Jedel Family Foundation Curatorial Fellow at Charlotte Street Foundation, where she organizes exhibitions and public programs. Previously, she was Curatorial Assistant at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2019-2020). From 2014 to 2018, she served as Public Programs & Research Coordinator at Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York. Her recent exhibitions include: Handiwork: Art, Craft, and the Space Between at Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City (2022); With Liberty and Justice at Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City (2021); where we came from & where we are going at Transformer, Washington, DC (2019); and reset at Garis & Hahn, New York (2016). She co-curated Postscript: Correspondent Works at artQ13, Rome (2015); 7×8 Curatorial Conversations at Budapest Art Market, Hungary (2013); and (in)complete at TEMP Art Space, New York (2013). Kitada received a BA in Art History and Classics from Bucknell University and an MA in Museum Studies from NYU.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is Wisconsin’s largest community foundation and was among the first established in the world. For more than a century, the Foundation has been at the heart of the civic community, helping donors achieve the greatest philanthropic impact, elevating the work of changemakers across neighborhoods, and bringing people and organizations together to help our region thrive. Racial equity is the Foundation’s North Star, guiding its investments and strategies for social and economic change. Leveraging generations of community knowledge, cross-sector partnerships and more than $1 billion in financial assets, the Foundation is committed to reimagining philanthropy, recentering communities and remaking systems to transform our region into a Milwaukee for all.

Joy Engine, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2019. Joy Engine uses public art as an “engine” to break barriers, spark meaningful human connections, and create equitable access and belonging within Milwaukee’s arts & culture community. Their goal is to activate creative community spaces through art.

For further information about the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship Program for Individual Visual Artists, please visit https://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/nohl.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.