The Emerging Curator’s Program is designed to discover curatorial talent in Los Angeles and gives an opportunity for an emerging curator to partner with LACE. Applicants are reviewed by a panel that will recommend proposals to the LACE team. For the program’s sixth installment one project will be selected for presentation in early 2021. The panel will select a compelling project that is consistent with LACE’s experimental spirit.
It is expected that submissions may be very open in nature because of the generous planning time allotted. The LACE team will work with the selected Emerging Curator in developing the exhibition as it evolves over the planning year, and collaborate on programming to ensure the work reaches its intended audiences. The project must be designed with a $5,000 budget in mind. LACE will provide space, exhibition consultation, installation expertise and assistance, and marketing and promotion.
Review Panelists for 2019 Submissions
Essence Harden is a Ph.D. Candidate, independent curator, and arts writer. Essence has curated exhibitions at Charlie James Gallery, California African American Museum (CAAM), Antenna Gallery (New Orleans), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), The Advocate and Gochis Galleries, Residency Art Gallery (Inglewood), Human Resources, Oakland Museum of California (2020), and UTA Arts (2020). Their writing has appeared in Contemporary Art Review LA (CARLA), LALA, Cultured Magazine, Performa Magazine, and SFAQ: International Arts and Culture amongst others. Essence is a recipient of The 2018 Creative Capital, Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Program Grant.
Essence graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in History and received their Master of Arts from the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Essence is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. She resides in Los Angeles, CA.
Cecilia Fajardo-Hillis a British/ Venezuelan art historian curator in modern and contemporary art, specializing on Latin American art, currently based in Southern California. Fajardo-Hill holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex, England, and an MA in 20th Century Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England. Fajardo-Hill was the Chief Curator at the Museum of Latin American Art, MOLAA, Long Beach, California; the Director and Chief Curator of the Cisneros Fontanals Arts Foundation (CIFO) and the Ella Fontanals Cisneros Collection, Miami; and the General Director of Sala Mendoza, an alternative space for contemporary art in Caracas, Venezuela. Fajardo-Hill has published and curated extensively on contemporary Latin American and international artists since the 1990s. Fajardo-Hill was Guest Curator at the Hammer Museum between 2013-2017 as co-curator of Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, a Getty PST LA/LA project, Hammer Museum, 2017, toured to the Brooklyn Museum, New York, and Pinacoteca, Sao Paulo, in 2018. She was Guest Lecturer at USC Roski School of Art and Design, Los Angeles; is Research Scholar at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Los Angeles, and is the co-curator of the upcoming touring exhibition XicanXperimental, Phoenix Museum, 2021. Fajardo-Hill is the editor of Remains – Tomorrow: Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction, on post 90s abstraction in Latin America, 2019, and the co-editor of two tomes on 20th and 21th – century Guatemalan art, an Arte GT 20/21 initiative, upcoming 2020. In 2020 will be Fellowship Visiting Research Scholar in the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS) and Visiting Lecturer, Princeton University, Princeton.
Gelare Khoshgozaran is an undisciplinary artist and writer who, in 2009 was transplanted from street protests in a city of four seasons to the windowless rooms of the University of Southern California where aesthetics and politics were discussed in endless summers. Using time-based media and film, her practice encompasses literary theory, translation, and autobiographical fiction. Her essays and interviews on art, politics and culture have been published and are forthcoming in contemptorary (co-founder), The Brooklyn Rail, Parkett, X-TRA, The Enemy, Ajam Media Collective and Temporary Art Review, amongst others. Her films, video essays, installations and performances have been presented in solo and group exhibitions at the New Museum, Queens Museum, Eyebeam, Hammer Museum, LACE, LAXART, Human Resources, Articule (Montreal), Beursschouwburg (Brussels) and Pori Art Museum (Pori, Finland). She was the recipient of a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2015) and an Art Matters Award (2017), and is artist in residence at Yarat Contemporary Art Space in Baku, Azerbaijan (Fall 2019).
Guidelines for Curatorial Proposals
- Applications may be submitted by an individual or curatorial team but must be based in the Los Angeles region
- Online applications only; no in-person submissions are accepted.
- Applicants are limited to one submission; there is no submission fee.
- Submissions must be consistent with LACE’s tradition of supporting experimental projects.
- Visuals are optional but encouraged; include PDFs or web links.
- Proposals are limited to a maximum one-page description.
- Label all pages of submission with Last Name, First Name on header.
- The panel may request the submission of additional materials at a later date.
- Curators with artistic practices should not submit their own work.
How to Apply
Complete the brief application form below and submit a maximum one-page description of your project. Visuals may be attached or links to work may be included. Email all submission materials to submissions@welcometolace.org.
Download application by clicking here.
Calendar
November 1, 2019 – Deadline for submissions
All applicants will receive an email confirmation that their proposal was received.
March 1, 2020 – Applicants notified via email
January 2021 – Project presented by emerging curator
Upcoming Emerging Curator’s exhibition:
Alex Jones and Kevin Bernard Moultrie Daye, selected as the 2021 Emerging Curators at LACE, will stage PARABLE 003, an exhibition that draws on the long and storied history of Black communities and settlements as tools of resistance. “From quilombos and maroons to The Black Panther Party — as well as Octavia Butler’s unfinished Parable of the Sower trilogy, PARABLE 003 sees space-making as the ultimate revolutionary act.”
View images from the first Emerging Curator’s presentation Customizing Language here.
View images from the second Emerging Curator’s presentation The Ecstasy of Mary Shelley here.
View images from the third Emerging Curator’s presentation Names Printed in Black here.
View images from the fourth Emerging Curator’s presentation Take my Money, Take my Body here.
View images from the fifth Emerging Curator’s presentation SOUND OFF: Silence + Resistance here.
LACE Emerging Curator Selene Preciado named a top women curator to follow in 2016.
Support for this program is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
