Narciso Argüelles, Edmond, OK

Narciso Argüelles is the Executive Director of Inclusion in Art and the Oklahoma Latino Cultural Center. He is also an art educator and practicing artist.

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Danny Baskin, Fayetteville, AR

Danny R.W. Baskin is an artist and curator from Fayetteville, Arkansas. He received his MFA in Sculpture from the University of Arkansas. Baskin works as co-director/curator for FEAST Gallery.

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Christina Beatty, Oklahoma City, OK

Serving as the Oklahoma Arts Council’s Community Arts Director, Christina Beatty brings a passion for the role of arts and cultural expression in community development.

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Liz Blood ,Tulsa, OK

Liz Blood is a writer and editor. Her journalistic work focuses on contemporary art, travel, and environmental, immigrant, and indigenous issues. She is a 2018–19 Oklahoma Center for the Humanities public fellow.

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Marjorie Bontemps, Tulsa, OK

Marjorie received a B.A. in Classics and Cultural Studies/Art History, and is currently pursuing an MSM. Her research interests include conceptual thinking in art process and community development through the arts.

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C.J. Charbonneau, Kansas City, MO

C.J. Charbonneau is an independent curator and writer, and director of the KC Women in the Arts networking group. She lives in Kansas City, MO

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Catherine Crain, Tulsa, OK

Catherine Crain is the Communications & Partnership Associate for 108|Contemporary. She graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BA in Art History and Arts Management in 2017.

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Zack Reeves, Tulsa, OK

Zack Reeves hails from Chelsea, Oklahoma. He received an MFA in writing from The New School. Zack is currently the Marketing Coordinator for Philbrook Museum of Art.

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Megan Rossman, Oklahoma City, OK

Megan Rossman is a writer and photography editor/manager for Oklahoma Today magazine and Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation. She lives in Oklahoma City.  

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John Selvidge, Oklahoma City, OK

John Selvidge works in Oklahoma CIty as a freelance writer, teacher, and consultant engaged in poetry, film, and nonprofit development for the Ralph Ellison Foundation.

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Samantha Sigmon, Bentonville, AR

Samantha Sigmon is an interpretation manager at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, as well as a writer, curator, and organizer focusing on art in Northwest Arkansas.

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Gretchen VanWormer, Stillwater, OK

Gretchen VanWormer is the author of a chapbook of essays, How I See The Humans (CutBank). She writes about art, nature, grief, and gender & sexuality.

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Confirmed Mentors Include:

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heather ahtone, Norman, OK

Currently the Senior Curator at the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum (AICCM) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the primary focus of heather ahtone’s research and writing has been to examine the intersection between tribal knowledge and contemporary art.

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Orit Gat, New York, NY and London, UK

Orit Gat is a writer living in New York. Her work on contemporary art and digital culture has appeared in a variety of magazines, including frieze, e-flux journal, art-agenda, the Times Literary Supplement, The World Policy Journal, and The White Review, where she’s a contributing editor.

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Lauren Haynes, Bentonville, AR

Lauren Haynes is Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Her most recent projects at Crystal Bridges include The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art (co-curator) and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (institutional curator).

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Zoe Larkins, Denver, CO

Zoe Larkins is the Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. At MCA Denver Zoe has curated exhibitions including Arthur Jafa: Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (2018), Diego Rodriguez-Warner: Honestly Lying (2018), and Jenny Morgan: SKINDEEP (2017).

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Sharon Louden, New York, NY

Sharon Louden is an artist, educator, advocate for artists, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books. Sharon’s work has been exhibited in numerous venues and is held in public and private collections. Sharon’s first book, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, is now in its seventh printing and sold in over 24 countries.

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Michael Maizels, Fayetteville, AR

Michael Maizels is a scholar, curator and dramaturge whose work brings the visual arts into productive collision with a broad range of disciplinary histories and potential futures. As an historian, he has undertaken several book projects including Barry Le Va: The Aesthetic Aftermath (University of Minnesota, 2015), In and Out Phase: An Episodic History of Art and Music in the 1960s (Under Review), and Collecting the Now: Studies in the Postwar Art Market (In Progress).

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Kirsten Olds (Lead Mentor), Tulsa, OK

Kirsten Olds is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tulsa, where she offers courses in the history of modern and contemporary art and visual culture. She received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Her academic research focuses on experimental art forms in the 1960s and 1970s; she is completing a book manuscript on the art of the Eternal Network, which explores how artists involved in mail art, video, and performance art generated networked practices forged through collaboration and circulation.

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Jennifer Scanlan, Oklahoma City, OK

Jennifer Scanlan is the Exhibitions and Curatorial Director at Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, where she has curated a number of exhibitions, including: Melvin Edwards: In Oklahoma and Jeffrey Gibson: Speak to Me. From 2013 through 2015 she was a New York-based independent curator focusing on contemporary art and design, and before that worked for 12 years as an Associate Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

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Cameron Shaw, New Orleans, LA

Cameron Shaw is a writer, editor, and the Executive Director of Pelican Bomb in New Orleans. Her work at Pelican Bomb centers on developing platforms for diverse voices, particularly through publishing and exhibition making, that expand the ways individuals and communities interact with contemporary art.

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Buzz Spector, St. Louis, MO

Buzz Spector’s art makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object, and is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory, and perception. He has had many solo exhibitions at museums and private galleries in the U.S. and abroad.

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Kate Van Steenhuyse, Wichita, KS

Kate is a painter, educator, and arts administrator. In 2014 she co-founded Harvester Arts, an experimental residency program in Wichita, KS which partners internationally recognized artists with local creatives to foster critical dialog and initiate the creation of new work. Kate currently advocates for arts-integration in education as the Program Manager at Arts Partners Wichita, a board member of the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and graduate faculty at Wichita State University.

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Catherine Whitney, Tulsa, OK

Catherine Whitney, Philbrook’s Chief Curator and Curator of American Art, oversees the curatorial department at the museum and has originated numerous exhibitions that have toured to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, and Wichita Art Museum, among other institutions.

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Lindsey Preston Zappas, Los Angeles, CA

Lindsay Preston Zappas is a publisher, writer, and artist based in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. She is the Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), an LA-based critical art magazine, and host of the Carla Podcast.