We were overwhelmed by the hundreds of submissions we received this summer for the five Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowships for Curators, and we’re excited to say that we finally sifted through all the applications to find five projects that we think you’ll enjoy.
Presenting the five recipients of this year’s fellowship: Tahnee Ahtone, La Tanya S. Autry, Dan Cameron, Jeremy Dennis, and Frederica Simmons. Each of the Fellowship recipients will each be joining us to help demystify the work of curators and revealing what goes into curation. Each of these curators will be publishing two posts on the site, organizing an email exhibition for Hyperallergic subscribers, and joining us for an online event to discuss their important research. The first Tremaine Fellow will begin December 1, 2021, and please know that all email exhibitions will be sent on Sundays at the end of each fellowship.
Here’s a little about each of the curators:
Tahnee Ahtone
Center for American Indian Enterprise
Development)
Title of Curatorial Project: “Translating Indigeneity and History Through Visual Terms, Kiowa Murals”
Based in: Oklahoma City, OK, New York, NY, and Santa Fe, NM
Tahnee Ahtone (Ahtoneharjo-Growingthunder) is an enrolled member of the Kiowa tribe, serving many roles in the arts as a museum director, policy advisor, curator, and artist. Well versed in tribal relations, her 25-year career in museums contributes to the arts serving the US, Canada, and Europe. Her platform as a cultural arts leader is to guide organizational alignment in tribal diplomacy and diversity through engagement initiatives. Tahnee provides advisory and consultation services to assist museums, institutions, and nonprofits in bettering their tribal relations and understanding Indigenous cultures. She has been recognized as a Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellow ’21, has won the Oklahoma Museum Association “Service to the Field” Award ’19, and Dodd Research Center Participant (UpStander Project for Human Rights) ’17. She is an Alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts (BFA), Harvard University (ALM), Columbia University Business Leadership (Certified), and Swansea University (ABD) “Political and Cultural Studies, Stewardship of Native American Art.”
Website, Instagram, Twitter
La Tanya S. Autry
Title of Curatorial Project: “Beholding, Black World-Making”
Based in: Cleveland, OH
Cultural organizer La Tanya S. Autry, recipient of ArtTable’s 2021 New Leadership Award, has developed exhibitions and programming in institutional spaces, such as Yale University Art Gallery, moCa Cleveland, Artspace New Haven, and various collaborative projects, including the Social Justice & Museums Resource List, The Art of Black Dissent, Museums Are Not Neutral, and the Black Liberation Center. She is completing her PhD in art history at the University of Delaware. Her dissertation The Crossroads of Commemoration: Lynching Landscapes in America examines the interplay of race, representation, memory, and public space.
Dan Cameron
Title of Curatorial Project: “Surrounding Chiloe”
Based in: New York City and Glens Falls, NY
Dan Cameron is a New York-based curator, art writer and educator, whose public career began in 1982 with his New Museum exhibition, Extended Sensibilities, the first museum effort in the US to examine gay & lesbian identity in art. In the intervening 40 years, Cameron has held senior curatorial positions at the New Museum, Orange County Museum of Art and CAC New Orleans, and in 2008 he was the founder of Prospect New Orleans, the contemporary art triennial to benefit the city after Hurricane Katrina. Dan has organized numerous biennials and other major exhibitions around the world, authored hundreds of published texts on contemporary art, and taught and lectured at numerous museums and universities. His book on Nicole Eisenman’s paintings was published in 2021 by Lund Humphries.
Jeremy Dennis
Title of Curatorial Project: “Shinnecock – Backward | Forward”
Based in: Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, NY.
Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer and a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY. In his work, he explores indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation. Dennis was one of 10 recipients of a 2016 Dreamstarter Grant from the national nonprofit organization Running Strong for American Indian Youth. He was awarded $10,000 to pursue his project, On This Site, which uses photography and an interactive online map to showcase culturally significant Native American sites on Long Island, a topic of special meaning for Dennis, who was raised on the Shinnecock Nation Reservation. He also created a book and exhibition from this project.
Most recently, Dennis received the Creative Bursar Award from Getty Images in 2018 to continue his series Stories. In 2013, Dennis began working on the series, Stories—Indigenous Oral Stories, Dreams and Myths. Inspired by North American indigenous stories, the artist staged supernatural images that transform these myths and legends to depictions of an actual experience in a photograph. Dennis holds an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, and a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University, NY. He currently lives and works in Southampton, New York on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation.
Website, Instagram, Studio Instagram
Frederica Simmons
Title of Curatorial Project: “I Will Be A Witness: Bessie Harvey and Alternative Legacies in American Feminist Art”
Based in: Minneapolis, MN
Frederica Simmons is a Black emerging curator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born and raised in the Southside of the city, Frederica has contributed to the preservation of ephemeral street art and associated memory through advocacy and praxis in the wake of the murder of George Floyd mere blocks from her family home. As a member of the Urban Art Mapping Project since 2020, she has contributed to the project’s George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art database, which seeks to document street art from around the world that was created in the aftermath of the murder of Floyd as part of an ongoing movement demanding social justice and equality. She has been published in the eighth edition of the Journal of Folklore and Education, the forthcoming AAM book Small Wins to Sweeping Change: Internal Initiatives to Foster Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism in Museums, and the forthcoming edited volume Beyond the Culture: Black Popular Culture and Social Justice. She prioritizes uplifting frequently overlooked narratives in art history through her pursuits, with her research concerning three areas and their intersections: Black studies; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; history of art and visual studies. Frederica has been the Curatorial Department Assistant for the Department of European Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art since 2019.
I loved reading about Dan Cameron. I knew him when he was living and doing art projects in Long Island City, heard about him going to New Orleans, but lost track of him when he began his Chilean projects. I am still in Long Island City, where a grass roots project has been developed called Culture Lab (culturelab.org) through the energies of Edjo Wheeler and the Plaxall Company, early inventors of plastics. Just wanted Dan to know he is still fondly remembered and to congratulate him on his fellowship.