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Curatorial Minds Lab 2021




Curatorial Minds Lab is a bimonthly gathering (online/on-campus) of SMU alumni and current students interested in deepening their understanding of the historical development of curatorial practices and the study of contemporary art display theory/practice including exhibition typologies and curatorial models. In the framework of this program, history, theory, contextualization, organization, and execution of curatorial projects will be discussed, evaluated, and critiqued.

The Curatorial Minds Lab is a program designed by SMU Pollock Gallery Director, Sofia Bastidas Vivar in collaboration with Assistant Director of the Hamon Arts Library and Hawn Gallery curator, Beverly Mitchell. The space for this theorization and practice will be in the Hawn Gallery at the Hamon Arts Library, accompanied by materials and texts. 

CML fellows will also moderate a series of online public talks given by curators established or emerging in their careers. Included in these series are Taylor Renee Aldridge, Sofia Casarin, Yina Jiménez Suriel, and May Makki. Dates for these series are Wednesday February 24, March 17, April 7, and April 28 at 5:30 pm.
Curatorial Minds Lab will be hosted by the Hawn Gallery in the Jake and Nancy Hamon Arts Library. Using and thinking about/around the gallery space within a library as a model for curatorial experimentation within the university and beyond is central to the lab.

We will visit the university libraries, learn about their collections and manifest new possibilities to intertwine contemporary arts and experimental artistic practices into already existing discourses.



















Curatorial Minds Lab Fellows

 Aidan Ellis (she/her) is a second-year student from Austin, TX pursuing majors in Film & Media Studies and English with minors in Human Rights and Art History. She applies her diverse academic interests to examine how the ideation, production, curation, and reception of cultural texts respond and relate to Human Rights topics and issues. She is particularly fascinated by texts as mechanisms for empathy, and she hopes to produce and curate texts in ways that utilize this mechanism to achieve meaningful, cross-cultural understanding.

Elise Huff is a recent graduate from Southern Methodist University. During her time as an undergraduate, she was a recipient of SMU's Engaged Learning Fellowship, conducting independent research on the intersection of nonverbal and verbal modes of communication and its impact on 1st and 2nd generation Germans and Mexicans in the United States. Recently, she interned for the Dallas Art Fair, as well as Site 131, a contemporary art gallery. She currently is enrolled in Harvard's CopyrightX program, examining topics related to art law, as well as intellectual and cultural property. Elise plans to pursue a master's degree in art history this upcoming fall, and her primary research interests include the use of legal documents in Conceptual art and the role of authorship in collaborative or performance-based works.

Adrienne Lichliter-Hines is a printmaking and paper artist and educator working in Dallas, Texas. She received her MFA from Clemson University in 2014 and has a Bachelors of Arts in art history and painting from Southern Methodist University. Her work has been shown throughout Texas and the United States as well as abroad in China, Japan, Egypt, Italy, and the UK. She has been an invited resident artist at The Kala Art Institute in Berkeley CA, 100 West in Corsicana TX, Artscape in Toronto, Canada, and Zygote Press in Cleveland OH. She is currently the Marketing and Programs Manager of The Cedars Union, a nonprofit art incubator in Dallas, TX, and the Advisory Board President of Corsicana Artists and Writers Residency. Adrienne maintains a modest studio practice exploring photographic textures and non-objective mark-making through lithography in an effort to challenge the hierarchy of commodified attention.

Gabriela Paiva de Toledo is a second-year Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture at Southern Methodist University. She received her B.A. in History with an Art History minor from the University of Campinas (Brazil) in 2015 and her M.A. in Art History from the same institution in 2017. Currently, her interests lie in Contemporary Brazilian art and photography.

Sophia Salinas is a senior SMU undergraduate student working towards a BA of Art History and a BBA in General Business. She has focused her studies on modern and contemporary art with attention to feminist theories of agency, embodiment, and technology, and is currently completing a thesis on Cyberfeminist Art Practices. She is also the current AAMD Intern in Museum Education at the Meadows Museum.