Consultants: Apr. 28 Doctor’s Hours for Visual Artists

Consultant Bios

These bios provide an opportunity for you to research which consultants would be appropriate for the advice and feedback you are seeking. Register here for Doctor’s Hours after 11:00 AM EST on April 15. 

Alhena Katsof, Curator
Alhena Katsof is a curator based in New York where she has organized exhibitions and events with Regina Rex, Shoot The Lobster and Lucie Fontaine. She co-curated, with Dean Daderko, a solo exhibition by the artist MPA at Leo Koenig, Inc., which included a performance as part of Performa 2011. Katsof has worked closely with numerous artists, including the research and design studio Metahaven (NL). She was Volskwagen Fellow at MoMA PS1 and Museum As Hub Fellow at New Museum, both in New York. Katsof is a Visiting Critic at Rhode Island School of Design and has presented with the Center for Experimental Lectures. In 2010 she was a participant on de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam prior to which she received and MFA from the Glasgow School of Art. Katsof collaborates with Public Movement (IL), who she joined at IASPIS (Stockholm) and SITAC XI (Mexico City). 

Asya Geisberg, Owner, Asya Geisberg Gallery
Asya Geisberg Gallery presents a visually eclectic and conceptually focused program of thought-provoking contemporary art.  AGG showcases art that manages to stand out and translate across multiple arenas of discourse, art history, and culture. The gallery works with young emerging artists as well as established artists from abroad. AGG has been featured in “Hot New York Galleries” in Newsweek, and has garnered reviews for its exhibitions in the New York Times, Time Out New York, the New Yorker, L Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, WNYC, ArtSlant, Two Coats of Paint, NY Arts Magazine, and numerous online coverage.  Asya Geisberg Gallery is a member of the New Art Dealers Alliance. With a BA in literature, history, and philosophy, and an MFA in fine art, Asya Geisberg has worked in many aspects of the art world, notably as a writer, curator and artist. Her international background has fostered a life-long interest in cross-cultural pollination, and a unique perspective on the various idioms of art. 

Debra Vanderburg Spencer, Independent Curator and Art Historian 
Along with being a curator and art historian Debra also has a background in arts administration and policy. Residing in New York City, she also advises private collectors on acquisitions, management and care of collections. Her current clients include The William J. Clinton Foundation, NY; Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston; New York University’s Faculty Resource Center; and Galleries at The Interchurch Center as Guest Curator of a series of five annual borough-specific exhibitions showcasing the diversity of professional artists in NYC (2012-2016). As Exhibitions Manager, the Schomburg Center/NY Public Library, she drafted their Policy for Permanent, Temporary and Traveling Exhibitions. In her capacity as Director of Special Projects, NY State Council on the Arts, Spencer played a major role in restructuring the agency’s grant making policies. She has been a consultant to the Harlem Arts Alliance, and a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), NY State Council on the Arts and the Harlem 125th Street Business Improvement District’s arts panel. Spencer has directed arts projects for the U.S. Congress and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. She received two NEA Fellowships in Arts Management, and is a member of the American Alliance of Museums and International Council on Museums. Spencer holds a Master’s Degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education (Administration, Planning and Social Policy), with adjunct studies in Filmmaking, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; The Museum of Fine Arts School, Boston (Drawing, Painting); Harvard University (Art History) and Western Michigan University (Art History).

Gabriel de Guzman, Curator of Visual Arts at Wave Hill, 
Gabriel organizes the Sunroom Project Space series for emerging artists and coordinates thematic group exhibitions in Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery.  He was also co-curator of Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial (summer 2013), featuring 73 artists who participated in the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program in 2012–13. He served as guest curator of the group exhibitions Dimensions Variable: Multiracial Identity (spring 2013) at Rush Arts Gallery, New York, and Immigrant Too (fall 2013) at Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance. He recently curated photographer Yael Ben-Zion’s solo exhibition, Intermarried (winter 2014), at La Galeria at Boricua College, New York. In April 2014, he organized the Recent Graduates Exhibition for the Affordable Art Fair in New York. Before joining Wave Hill’s staff in 2010, he was Neubauer Family Foundation Curatorial Assistant at The Jewish Museum, where he coordinated exhibitions on Harry Houdini, Louise Nevelson, Joan Snyder, Andy Warhol, and Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider. Mr. de Guzman contributed an essay in the Bronx Calling catalogue, an entry in Masterworks of The Jewish Museum, as well as biographical texts in catalogues for Houdini: Art and Magic, Warhol’s Jews, Louise Nevelson, and Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider. He earned an M.A. in art history from Hunter College, City University of New York, and a B.A. in art history from the University of Virginia.

Kristen Force, Junior Specialist in Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s 
Kristen Force is a Junior Specialist in Post-War and Contemporary Art. Kristen joined Christie’s in 2011 and has since managed the highly successful Artists for Haiti sale held in conjunction with David Zwirner and the Ben Stiller Foundation, which raised over $12million for Earthquake Relief, New Day: Artists for Japan held in collaboration with Takashi Murakami to aid the Tsunami relief and most recently, the 11th Hour held in conjunction with the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation to benefit wildlife and environmental conservation, which was the most successful environmental charity auction ever held, raising over $38 million for environmental causes. She currently facilitates consignments to all Post-War & Contemporary Art auctions across international sale sites as well as researching and executing Post-War & Contemporary Art appraisals. Kristen received her B.A. in International Communications with a minor in French at Texas Christian University and her M.A. in Post-War and Contemporary Art History at Christie’s Education.

Marco Antonini, Executive Director and Curator at NURTUREart 
Antonini’s tenure, started in December 2010, has coincided with a period of great expansion and change in the organization, helping consolidate its status as a unique forum for emerging artists and curators. Antonini’s own curatorial projects at NURTUREart include the organization of ambitious programs: the 2011 WE ARE:, in which ten artists, curators and neighboring organizations were invited to take over NURTUREart for a week each,the 2012, three-part, …Is This Free? for which he also edited a book of interviews and texts on the topic of “Free” art and the upcoming Multiplicity, a reflection on poetic urbanism curated in collaboration with an international network of curators, hosted by NURTUREart in collaboration with Invisible Exports and Mixed Greens galleries. Some of Antonini’s previous curatorial projects have been produced by Japan Society, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), ISE Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation, The Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice, The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), FUTURA Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, CCEG, Guatemala City. Recent projects include Welcome to The Real an exhibition curated for {TEMP} art space and the ongoing Richard, a large multi-authored project dedicated to a re-evaluation of readymade art in contemporary practice. Antonini’s articles, essays, interviews, short stories and poetry have been published worldwide on magazines, journals, catalogs and other exhibition-related publications. His MA dissertation thesis “The Obsolete in Reverse: Robert Smithson and Science Fiction” was a finalist in the 2012 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grants and will be presented at the 2014 College Art Association conference in Chicago. He is currently editing a book of essays and interviews dedicated to the return of abstraction in contemporary painting.

Maymanah Farhat, Writer and Art Historian 
Maymanah is an art historian who has written widely on modern and contemporary Arab art. Her essays have been featured in monographs, exhibition catalogues, e-zines, and journals. Her reviews have appeared in Art Journal, ArtAsiaPacific magazine, and Callaloo: Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, among others. She was the West Asia editor of ArtAsiaPacific magazine’s annual Almanac from 2006 to 2009, covering the year in art for 14 Middle Eastern countries. As part of her work for a commercial art space in the Middle East from 2009 until 2011, she authored over 150 artist bios and profiles for half a dozen auction catalogues. Based in New York since 2005, she has curated several exhibitions for non-profits in the city, including the South Asian Creative Womens Collective’s 14th annual exhibition at Cuchifritos gallery. In 2010, she co-curated New York Chronicles at the Virginia Commonwealth University Gallery in Doha, Qatar, and most recently co-curated the large-scale group exhibition Emo at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in Manhattan. Maymanah is the co-editor of Jadaliyya’s culture page.  

Morgan Parker, Education Director at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA)
Morgan Parker has worked in various capacities at arts organizations throughout New York City for over seven years, including managing Studio in a School’s Teen Apprenticeship Program and creating and implementing the Gallery Educator program at MoMA PS1. In her current role as Education Director at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), Parker manages all of the museum interns and volunteers, conducts exhibition tours, and creates dynamic exhibition-related education programs and workshops for youth, adults and families. She received her BA in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Columbia University and her MFA in Poetry from NYU.

Sara Jo Ramero, Co-founder/-Partner/-Director of Schroeder Romero and Schroeder Romero Editions. 
In 2001 Lisa Schroeder and Sara Jo Romero opened the contemporary art gallery Schroeder Romero. Originally based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the gallery relocated to Chelsea in 2006 and remained open until the end of 2012. Our artists and gallery have been featured in articles and reviews in most major publications. Since closing the physical gallery space, Schroeder Romero has participated in various projects including curating exhibitions in other venues, private dealing and consulting, and participating in the Moving Image video art in London in October 2013 and in New York this past March.Schroeder Romero Editions was founded in 2012 by Lisa Schroeder and Sara Jo Romero with the aim of producing exclusive, hand-selected, high quality editions and multiples at prices almost anyone can afford. Schroeder Romero Editions is primarily an online venture although we are pleased to show our editions and multiples by participating in the upcoming Pulse Art Fair in New York in May. Before forming Schroeder Romero, Sara Jo Romero was with Holly Solomon Gallery for six years. As director, she worked with such artists as Nam June Paik, William Wegman and Izhar Patkin. She assisted in the retrospective exhibition, “The Worlds of Nam June Paik” at the Guggenheim Museum in 2000. She also gained experience working at Charles Cowles Gallery and Paula Allen Gallery in New York.

Yaelle Amir, Curator
Yaelle Amir is an independent curator and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She has curated exhibitions at Center for Book Arts, Artists Space, ISE Cultural Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation, Nurture Art, and Wallach Art Gallery, among others. Her writing has appeared in numerous art publications including Art in America, ArtLies, ArtSlant, ArtUS, Beautiful/Decay, and Sculpture Magazine. She has worked at major New York art institutions, such as the International Center of Photography, Rubin Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, and currently holds a Research Scholar position at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. Her writing and curatorial projects focus primarily on emerging and mid-career artists whose works meld the creative process with immediate social concerns, with an emphasis on photography, video, and new media.