Curatorial Projects (Selected)
Between 2012 - 2016, I was the Director of fort gondo compound for the arts, a community arts forum founded in 2002 on St. Louis' Cherokee Street consisting of two neighboring storefront galleries (fort gondo and beverly) - producing nearly two dozen exhibitions a year, as well as a poetry series, a publication series and a public program series. During my tenure, I established nonprofit status and garnered a 2-year program support grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts (2015-2016), a Daedalus Foundation grant (2014) and several local arts grants. The space closed permanently in December of 2016. Image: Brandon Anschultz & Benjamin Edelberg, All That Heaven Allows, two-person exhibition titled after the 1955 Douglas Sirk film, 2013.
Day of the Locust, a group exhibition of work that deployed failure as a productive strategy for overcoming the constraints of ideology and idealism. The exhibit is titled after the 1939 novel by Nathanael West. White Flag Projects, November 3 - December 10, 2011. Featuring artists Katherine Bernhardt, Rochelle Feinstein, Jonathan Horowitz, Lee Lozano, Jon Pestoni, Charlotte Posenenske and Mamie Tinkler.
Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt: The True Praxis of Dotty Page, Willy Nilly & the Book of Roof, Read Daily by Savant in the Cathedral of St. Anamnesis, & the Sacred Dentures of Emma Street. Solo exhibition of mixed-media assemblages of household materials celebrating queer, working-class, Catholic identity by trailblazing artist and Stonewall Uprising activist Lanigan-Schmidt. The Front Room at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, April 30-May 23, 2010.
Everybody’s Autobiography: Robert Gober & Kerry James Marshall, a two-person exhibition, titled after the 1937 book by Gertrude Stein, interrogating the structure of “common” identities through seemingly banal motifs and the reproductive capacity of printmaking. SGC International Curated Exhibition at the Center for Creative Arts (St. Louis, MO), March 17-April 24, 2011.
100 Boots Poetry Series, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Spring 2017 - 2019, co-curated with Ted Mathys. (Pictured: Don Mee Choi; photo by Chris Bowman)
XOXO, group exhibition, Des Lee Gallery (Washington University in St. Louis), February 8 - March 10, 2018. X marks the spot, the kiss, the nixing-out; O is the void and the hug, the encircling gesture that says that’s it and, all together, I love you truly but casually.The artworks in this show burlesque common strategies of evoking authenticity, using intimacy and self-revelation as methods for unmasking the constructedness of status quo identity. Featuring artists Zoe Buckman, Nicole Eisenman, Fantich & Young, Chantal Jaffe, Terrence Koh, Marilyn Minter, Toyin Odutola, Mickalene Thomas and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others.
The One Thing That Can Save America, Charlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, MO), March 24th - April 30, 2016, is group exhibition that explored the creative potential of hyper-specificity of place. Taking its title from the eponymous 1972 John Ashbery poem, which opens with the question “What is central?”, the exhibit negotiated notions of centrality and locale through a variety of media and approaches. Featuring 2016 Charlotte Street Studio Residency artists Max Adrian, Hannah Carr, Molly Garrett, Paige Hinshaw, Lara Shipley; writers, Jason Preu, Danny Volin, Lucas Wetzel; and collectives Paris of the Plains Podcast and The Archive Collective.
Overview is a Place is a group exhibition, titled after a line from Claudia Rankine’s book The End of the Alphabet (1998), featuring seven St. Louis-based artists who explore the pendulum swing of empowerment and dislocation from self and place as a consequence of cultural essentializing. SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York City), March 6 - 12, 2018. Featuring artists Lyndon Barrois, Jr., Addoley Dzegede, Jen Everett, Kahlil Robert Irving, Basil Kincaid, Katherine Simone Reynolds and WORK/PLAY.
Ideas of Order, Center for Creative Arts (St. Louis, MO), September 28-November 18, 2012. Titled after a poem from 1934 by Wallace Stevens, this group exhibition collected work driven by the unremitting allure and false hope of order by four St. Louis artists — Gina Alvarez, John Early, Wonder Koch and Peter Pranschke — whose practices are shaped by their home-based studios and fastidious use of everyday materials.