The Meet the Curators 2  will be held on Saturday, September 16th, 2017 at the Council Chambers, City Hall, 280 Grove St. Jersey City, NJ

Arthur Bruso is co-founder of “Curious Matter,” a contemporary art gallery in Jersey City that offers  exhibition and curatorial opportunities to artists of all career stages.  Together with partner Raymond Mingst, Bruso creates inquiry-based group shows with themes that serve as departure points for artworks that intersect with subjects under investigation in myriad ways, explicit and covert.  The Curious Matter team has produced over 30 exhibitions actively collaborating with other organizations and have presented over 400 artists from New York, New Jersey, across the country and internationally.  CityArts wrote of Curious Matter “This eccentric and rarified little gallery is home to some of the most intellectually rigorous shows in the area.”  Recent shows include  “A World Where We Belong ” at the Dineen Hull Gallery (Hudson Community College), and “Dark Wood,” produced in collaboration with Art House Productions (traveled to the Noyes Museum of Art in Atlantic City, NJ).  Arthur holds a degree in Art Education from State University of New York in New Paltz and a MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Henone Girma is an emerging curator in the New York/New Jersey landscape.  Her well-regarded work at Newark Museum (former)  and Art in FLUX in Harlem (where she curated Woe-nderland, featuring five NYC-based artists) inspire interest and admiration in her colleagues, who categorize Henone as a rising star.  Christa Clark, outgoing Senior Curator of African Arts at Newark Museum, describes Henone’s unusually perceptive eye.  Her active curatorial schedule includes an upcoming show at the Visual Arts Center in Summit, NJ.  A native of Ethiopia, Henone received a master’s degree in Visual Arts Administration from NYU and lives in Harlem.

Donna Gustafson, PhD is the curator of American Art and Mellon Director for Academic Programs at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. She has held several museum positions including Chief Curator at the American Federation of Arts in New York City and Director of Exhibitions at the Hunterdon Art Museum in New Jersey. Donna has published widely on American and contemporary art blending her writing and curatorial skills on the exhibit and book, both titled Images from the World Between: The Circus on the Twentieth-Century American Art (MIT Press, 2001). She has lectured at the Whitney Museum, the College Art Association, Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, Lafayette College and the Wadsworth Athenaeum among others. Dr. Gustafson earned her PhD in Art History at Rutgers University.

Emily Johnsen is Gallery Manager at William Paterson University Galleries in Wayne, New Jersey where she coordinates exhibitions, develops public programs, organizes special events, and manages social media engagement to introduce new audiences to contemporary art. Johnson is passionate about photography, art book publishing, interdisciplinary collaborations, and marketing the arts. She recently curated Traces of Time: Photographic Explorations of the Natural World, collaborating with environmental science faculty to present the ways in which the arts and sciences serve one another. Emily also organizes the annual Ink, Press, Repeat: National Printmaking and Book Art Exhibition, presenting the work of more than 50 artists selected by prominent figures in the printmaking field. Past professional affiliations include Gallery Manager at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in Chelsea, Pace/MacGill Gallery, Phillips, de Pury & Company (photographs department), and Aperture Foundation. Emily holds a B.A. in the History of Art and Architecture from Miami University (Ohio), and a master’s degree in Visual Arts Administration from New York University.

Jo-El Lopez, curator, visual artist, arts advocate, has curated independent and affiliated exhibitions since 2010.  He seeks to connect urban audiences with cultural experience in non-traditional arts settings. Lopez has been curating the critically-acclaimed, Gallery Aferro-produced Activate: Market Street show since 2011. Activate: Market Street is a year-long exhibition that displays installations and two-dimensional art in store windows on one of the busiest streets is Newark, NJ. Other shows include: The Store Front Gates Project, murals, and pop up shows for the City of Newark and Yendor Arts, shows for Gallery Aferro, Newark Open Doors, Paterson Art Walk, Paterson Great Falls Festival, Newark Artfront Galleries and Hoboken Digable Arts Festival. Originally from the Paterson, NJ area, Jo-El studied at Kean and Montclair State Universities and has exhibited works throughout the NY metropolitan and Caribbean areas.

Anne Novado is Partner and Director of NOVADO GALLERY, in Jersey City’s Powerhouse Arts District, which specializes in contemporary art, reclaimed furniture design and ceramics. With over fifteen years of experience in the visual arts, Anne curates art exhibitions and has served as board member of a Syracuse based not-for-profit arts organization, and juried local, national and international art shows. Through her years of experience, Anne has created a broad network of arts-interested contacts.  She specializes in curatorial projects & collaboration, residential and corporate art advisory services.  Anne holds an MFA in Painting from Syracuse University.

Fayemi Shakur is Executive Director of City Without Walls, New Jersey’s oldest alternative art space founded in 1975. Previously, Fayemi served at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art as a marketing and public program manager for four years. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times Lens Photography blog, The International Review of African American Art, Nueva Luz Photographic Journal, and HYCIDE magazine, a photojournalism publication she helped create in 2011 with photojournalist and Editor-in-Chief Akintola Hanif and journalist, Carrie Stetler.  Fayemi attended New Jersey City University.

Dexter Wimberly organizes exhibitions that explore contemporary culture, American history, economics, and power dynamics. In 2016, Dexter was appointed Executive Director of Aljira – a Center for Contemporary Art, located in Newark, New Jersey. A passionate supporter of the arts, Dexter has exhibited the work of hundreds of artists internationally. During his decade-long career, he has organized exhibitions and programs at dozens of museums and galleries including the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) Raleigh, The California African American Museum, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), 101/EXHIBIT gallery, Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, bitforms gallery, Koki Arts gallery (Tokyo), and The Third Line Gallery (Dubai).  Dexter attended CUNY-Brooklyn College.