Past Programs

Prior to our Network Program, which begun in 2021, we had a long-running Art & Dialogue series (2015-2020) and Houston Fellowship program (2019-2020), which extended the benefits of the Awards by fostering discourse between artists and arts professionals. Learn about these past programs below.

Art & Dialogue

Artadia’s Art & Dialogue program forged connections between Artadia Awardees, curators, and diverse publics in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco through a series of studio visits, public programs, and online engagement. Concluded in 2020, our Art & Dialogue program has evolved to become a new program, the Artadia Network, by restructuring how we facilitate connections and providing resource support to Awardees.

Kimberli Gant, Art & Dialogue: New York 2019

Peter Eeley, Art & Dialogue: San Francisco 2016

Dexter Wimberly, Art & Dialogue: Los Angeles 2018

Beatriz Santiago Munoz, Art & Dialogue: Houston 2017

Art & Dialogue Visiting Curators and Cultural Partners

Daniel Palmer
Curator, Public Art Fund

Andrea Andersson
Independent Curator, Founding Director & Chief Curator, Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, public program with Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta

Adrienne Edwards
Engell Speyer Family Curator and Curator of Performance at The Whitney Museum, public program with The School of the Art Institute Chicago, Chicago

Michelle White
Senior Curator, The Menil Collection, public program with California College of the Arts (CCA) Wattis Institute, San Francisco

Pilar Tompkins Rivas
Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Curatorial and Collections at The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, public program with The Brooklyn Museum, New York

Courtney J. Martin
Director, Yale Center for British Art, public program with LAXART, Los Angeles

Kimberli Gant
McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Chrysler Museum of Art, public program at The Bronx Museum’s The Block Gallery, New York

Jessica Bell Brown
Independent Curator, public program at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Heather Pesanti
Curator, Austin Contemporary, public program at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
Independent Curator, public program at Lawndale, Houston

Miranda Lash
Curator of Contemporary Art, The Speed Museum, public program at The Lab, San Francisco

Charlotte Cotton
Independent Curator, public program at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Valerie Cassel Oliver
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, at the Brooklyn Museum, New York

Lauren Haynes
Curator of Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Antwaun Sargent
Writer & Critic, at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Artist and co-founder of Beta-Local, San Juan, Puerto Rico, at Lawndale Art Center, Houston

Chrissie Iles
Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, at The Lab, San Francisco

Alex Klein
Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber (CHE’60) Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, at Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Boston

Miguel Lopez
Chief Curator of TEOR/éTica, San Jose, Costa Rica, at the Brooklyn Museum, New York

Naima Keith
Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Programs, California African American Museum, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Meg Onli
Assistant Curator, ICA Philadelphia, at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta

Anne Ellegood
Senior Curator, Hammer Museum, at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston

Helen Molesworth
Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, at The Lab, San Francisco

Magali Arriola
Independent Writer and Curator, at The Mistake Room, Los Angeles

Kristan Kennedy
Visual Art Curator, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, at Skowhegan, New York

Elysia Borowy-Reeder
Executive Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), at Threewalls, Chicago

Cesar Garcia
Founder, Director, Chief Curator, The Mistake Room, at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta

Catherine Morris
Sackler Center Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, at MFAH, Houston

Peter Eleey
Associate Director of Exhibitions and Programs, MoMA PS1, at The Lab, San Francisco

Diana Nawi
Associate Curator, Perez Art Museum Miami, at 356 Mission, Los Angeles

Elizabeth Sherman
Assistant Curator, Perez Art Museum Miami, at MassArt, Boston

Press Partners
Bad at Sports, Chicago; Burnaway, Atlanta

Aram Moshayedi
Curator, The Hammer Museum, at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and Burnaway, Atlanta

Hazma Walker
Associate Curator, Renaissance Society, Co-curator, Made in LA 2016, at The Lab, San Francisco

Tina Kukielski
Curator, Carnegie Museum of Art, at Threewalls, Chicago

Miki Garcia
Executive Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, at MFAH, Houston

Rachel Adams
Associate Curator, UB Art Galleries, at the Rose Art Museum, Boston

Katherine Brinson
Associate Curator, Guggenheim, at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

Art & Dialogue was made possible thanks to the generosity of The Paul & Edith Babson Foundation, The Brown Foundation, the California Community Foundation, Chubb,The Fleishhacker Foundation, The Houston Endowment, The Joyce Foundation, MailChimp, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, as well as Artadia’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors throughout the country.

Houston Fellowship

Concluded in 2020, the Houston Artadia Fellowship program launched in 2018 and was designed to connect Houston’s diverse immigrant and refugee artists with local and national arts communities. Artadia fostered these connections through close collaborations with local partners, critical discourse, exhibition opportunities, and studio visits with renowned curators and artists to support and cultivate artistic excellence. Individual artists who identified as immigrants or refugees, working in any visual medium, at any stage in their career, living in Houston and its Contiguous Counties were encouraged to apply. Fellows each received a $2,500 honorarium, an introduction to an artist advisor chosen by Artadia from its pool of Houston-based Artadia Awardees, and the facilitation of a series of meetings catered to the specific needs of each fellow. In addition, the program offered the opportunity to present their work publicly to the Houston art community, including artists, collectors, dealers, critics, curators, and other arts professionals.

During the pilot application process in 2018, every artist who applied was from a different country, representing nearly every region in the world. Over 50% of the applicants were female and the same number of applicants identified as painters. Geographically, 66% of the applicants reside in different zipcodes, spanning as far as Sugar Land, TX, and Katy, TX, right into Gulfton and Third Ward neighborhoods.

2020 Houston Fellows

Betirri Bengtson, Working Equitation, 2013. Acrylic on canvas,30 x 30"

Gao Hang, 20182019, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48"

Veronica Ibargüengoitia, Window #10, 2019. Oil on canvas, 30 x 24"

Valentina Jager, The Incredible Shrinking Mercury, 2016. Performance, Guadalajara, Mexico.

Ling-lin Ku, Stiletto Street Walking, 2018. 72 x 6 x 75"

2019 Houston Fellows

Abdul Basit, Sunrise in Forest, 2016. Watercolor on paper, 25 x 35cm.

Eduardo Herrera, Keep Going, (Collaboration with Ben Johnston), 2017. Outdoor acrylic paint and Aerosol paint mural, 90 x 21 ft approximately.

Lanre Buraimoh, Sea, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 45 x 35 inches.

Sanya Wafeq, Street Working Boy. Charcoal, pencil and watercolor, 28 x 20 inches.

Karen Navarro, Soft Objects, 2018. Installation at Sabine St. Studios.

Houston Fellow Advisors

Francis Almendárez, 2018 Houston Artadia Awardee

Jillian Conrad, 2012 Houston Artadia Awardee

El Franco Lee II, 2005 and 2015 Houston Artadia Awardee

Delilah Montoya, 2008 Houston Artadia Awardee

Karen Navarro, 2019 Houston Fellow

Regina Agu, 2017 Houston Artadia Awardee

Bill Davenport, 2010 Houston Artadia Awardee

Laura Lark, 2004 Houston Artadia Awardee

Delilah Montoya, 2008 Houston Artadia Awardee

Kaneem Smith, 2017 Houston Artadia Awardee