Jurors

Jurors for the 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowships have not yet been announced. Please check back soon for updates.

2022 Previewers

Erin Jane Nelson. Erin Jane Nelson is an Atlanta-based artist and writer who received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2011. Her work was recently included in the 2021 New Museum Triennial: Hard Water Soft Stone in New York and Making Knowing: Craft in Art 1950-2019 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Chapter (NYC), and DOCUMENT (Chicago). Nelson is a 2020 recipient of the Rabkin Award for Arts Journalism and from 2018-2021 served as the Artistic Director of Burnaway, a non-profit publication dedicated to contemporary art and criticism from the American South. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes' "30 under 30" in Arts & Culture. Prior to Burnaway, she co-directed Species, an artist-run gallery with her husband Jason Benson, and served as the Curatorial Assistant in Photography and Folk & Self-taught Art at the High Museum of Art. Her work is included in numerous institutional and public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (USA), the Fries Museum (NL), and KADIST (USA), and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Artforum, ArtNet, Frieze Magazine, Cultured Magazine, T Magazine, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Chicago Tribune, and Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles.

Amy Shimshon-Santo. Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. Her interdisciplinary work connects culture, education, and ecology. Her teaching career has spanned research universities, community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, and spaces of incarceration. She has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Singapore at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Arts. Amy has edited two books amplifying community voices: Et Al: New Voices in Arts Management (Illinois Open Publishing Network), and Arts = Education (UC Press). An essayist and poet, she is the author of Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press), Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press), and the forthcoming Catastrophic Molting with FlowerSong Press (2022). Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Tilt West, Boom CA, Yes Poetry, GeoHumanities, Routledge, SAGE, UC Press, SUNY Press, and more. Recently, she participated in Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos with Self Help Graphics on Google Arts and Culture, appeared on Radio Educación, and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, the UK’s BBC Radio, the Writer’s Project Ghana, and Goethe Institut in Accra. She was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry (2020), a Rainbow Reads Award in poetry (2020), Best of the Net in poetry (2018), and a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction (2017). Amy represented the State of California at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Education Innovation Institute, and was a founding member of CREATE CA. She was consulting producer for PBS So Cal’s episode on Arts Education. Earlier in her career, she co-founded the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, directed the ArtsBridge Program at UCLA, and directed the Arts Management Program at Claremont Graduate University. She founded CREO Changemakers committed to generating a just society, amplifying community knowledge, and catalyzing great ideas into action.

Dr. Shimshon-Santo serves on all three 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowships juror panels.

2022 State Fellowships Juror Panel

elizabet elliott. Elliot joined Alabama Contemporary Art Center in November of 2018. Elliott has twelve years of experience in curating at both the grass-roots and institutional level. Prior to coming to Alabama Contemporary, she served 5 years at the Mobile Museum of Art, and 4 years as the founding director of the Rumor Union, a grassroots community art organization that organized site-specific installation, performance, and new media festivals, guerrilla exhibitions, outreach programs, and artist services. Elliott has also served on several boards and in community action groups, including 2 years as Vice President of the Creative Wellness Foundation. She received her BFA with First Class Honors from Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand in 2009, and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College in Port Townsend, WA in 2014, focusing on Social/Civic practice. She enjoys action movies and dirty jokes.

Floyd Hall. Floyd Hall is a media strategist, engineer, cultural producer, writer, and documentarian from Atlanta, Georgia. As an artist and curator, his work often relates to the intersection of culture, media, and technology as platforms to construct narratives of place.

 His current and past work spans several areas, including Aerospace, Brand Management, Digital Media, Nonprofit Arts, Nonprofit Media, Public Art, and Social Change. He holds a BS in Mathematics from Morehouse College, a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech, and an MBA from Columbia University.

Floyd is an Idea Capital artist grant recipient; a Fulton County Arts & Culture artist grant recipient; a Hambidge Cross-Pollination Art Lab Fellow and a Hambidge Creative Residency Fellow; and has presented as a guest lecturer at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Spelman College, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and the Hudgens Center for Art and Learning. He also produced Pop-Up Zine Atlanta, a live storytelling event that featured non-fiction, multimedia stories about life in metropolitan Atlanta.

Amy Shimshon-Santo. Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. Her interdisciplinary work connects culture, education, and ecology. Her teaching career has spanned research universities, community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, and spaces of incarceration. She has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Singapore at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Arts. Amy has edited two books amplifying community voices: Et Al: New Voices in Arts Management (Illinois Open Publishing Network), and Arts = Education (UC Press). An essayist and poet, she is the author of Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press), Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press), and the forthcoming Catastrophic Molting with FlowerSong Press (2022). Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Tilt West, Boom CA, Yes Poetry, GeoHumanities, Routledge, SAGE, UC Press, SUNY Press, and more. Recently, she participated in Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos with Self Help Graphics on Google Arts and Culture, appeared on Radio Educación, and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, the UK’s BBC Radio, the Writer’s Project Ghana, and Goethe Institut in Accra. She was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry (2020), a Rainbow Reads Award in poetry (2020), Best of the Net in poetry (2018), and a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction (2017). Amy represented the State of California at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Education Innovation Institute, and was a founding member of CREATE CA. She was consulting producer for PBS So Cal’s episode on Arts Education. Earlier in her career, she co-founded the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, directed the ArtsBridge Program at UCLA, and directed the Arts Management Program at Claremont Graduate University. She founded CREO Changemakers committed to generating a just society, amplifying community knowledge, and catalyzing great ideas into action.

Dr. Shimshon-Santo serves on all three 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowships juror panels.

Sarah Workneh. Sarah Workneh has worked in alternative education spaces for artists for over 20 years. She has served as Co-Director of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture since 2010. Primarily focused on the educational program, and off-season programming with Alumni, Sarah leads all efforts to support artists in the expansion of their practices. Understanding the holistic nature of the program, Sarah oversees the admissions process, facilities usage, and expansion under Skowhegan’s Master Plan, as well as the educational daily life on campus. Sarah has lectured widely as a Visiting Artist/Critic at schools & programs around the US and has served as an advisor to both academic and residency programs, particularly around issues of equity. Sarah has published a variety of texts -- most recently an essay on participatory education and a catalog essay on radical education published by the New Museum. She serves on the boards of Colby College Museum of Art, the Black Lunch Table, RAIR in Philadelphia, Buxton School in Williamstown, MA and is a member of the Lake Wesserunsett Association Conservation Committee in Maine. In 2020, she partnered with Linda Goode Bryant & Project Eats to convert one of the organization's farms into a food pantry in Brownsville, NYC. Sarah has a BA in Linguistics & Russian and pursued graduate work focused on Social Movement Theory, Political Economy, & Liberation Theology.

2022 Southern Prize Juror Panel

Anne Collins Smith. Anne Collins Smith has been the Curator of Collections at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art since 2003. She is a cultural curator, art historian, and cultural worker in the literary, visual, and performing arts. Smith received a bachelor’s of art degree in English and art from Spelman College and a master’s of art degree in visual arts administration from New York University. Smith was a Romare Bearden Fellow at the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College where she curated The Space Between: Artists Engaging Race and Syncretism (2003).

Smith has curated the permanent collection exhibitions Showcase & Tell (2009), Multiple Choice: Perspectives on the Spelman College Collection (2013), and PRESENCE: Meditations on the Spelman College Collection (2019). Maren Hassinger . . . Dreaming (2015) and Howardena Pindell (2015) are among the other exhibitions she has co-organized. Smith has participated in the Art Leaders of Metro Atlanta; Independent Curators International’s Curatorial Intensive; Getty Leadership Institute’s Museum Leaders: The Next Generation; Association of Art Museum Curator’s Mentorship program, and the BURNAWAY Art Writers Mentorship program. She serves on the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) Arts Council and the board of trustees of the Association of Art Museum Curators.

Garth Johnson. Garth Johnson is the Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Curator of Ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Johnson is a self-described craft activist who explores craft’s influence and relevance in the 21st century. His research interests range from 1960s and 70s artist-led movements in the field of ceramics to the intersection of clay, video, and performance. His recent exhibitions at the Everson include The Floating Bridge: Postmodern and Contemporary Japanese Ceramics, Renegades & Reformers: American Art Pottery, and Earth Piece: Conceptual and Performative Works in Clay. His writing has been published nationally and internationally, with recent contribution to the books Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City is Nature and Victor Cicansky: The Gardener’s Universe. 

Amy Shimshon-Santo. Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. Her interdisciplinary work connects culture, education, and ecology. Her teaching career has spanned research universities, community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, and spaces of incarceration. She has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Singapore at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Arts. Amy has edited two books amplifying community voices: Et Al: New Voices in Arts Management (Illinois Open Publishing Network), and Arts = Education (UC Press). An essayist and poet, she is the author of Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press), Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press), and the forthcoming Catastrophic Molting with FlowerSong Press (2022). Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Tilt West, Boom CA, Yes Poetry, GeoHumanities, Routledge, SAGE, UC Press, SUNY Press, and more. Recently, she participated in Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos with Self Help Graphics on Google Arts and Culture, appeared on Radio Educación, and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, the UK’s BBC Radio, the Writer’s Project Ghana, and Goethe Institut in Accra. She was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry (2020), a Rainbow Reads Award in poetry (2020), Best of the Net in poetry (2018), and a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction (2017). Amy represented the State of California at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Education Innovation Institute, and was a founding member of CREATE CA. She was consulting producer for PBS So Cal’s episode on Arts Education. Earlier in her career, she co-founded the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, directed the ArtsBridge Program at UCLA, and directed the Arts Management Program at Claremont Graduate University. She founded CREO Changemakers committed to generating a just society, amplifying community knowledge, and catalyzing great ideas into action.

Dr. Shimshon-Santo serves on all three 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowships juror panels.

2021 Previewers

Rosie Gordon Wallace | Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator - Miami, FL. Rosie Gordon-Wallace is a recognized curator, arts advocate, community leader, and pioneer in advancing contemporary diaspora art. She founded the Diaspora Vibe Culture Arts Incubator (DVCAI) to serve as a local and global laboratory dedicated to promoting, nurturing, and cultivating the vision and diverse talents of emerging artists from the Caribbean Diaspora, artists of color, and immigrant artists. Twenty-five years later, DVCAI is recognized as a global resource and one of the region’s leading platforms dedicated to providing diaspora artists with a venue to explore and experiment with new forms and themes that challenge traditional definitions of the Caribbean and Latin American art. DVCAI artists have traveled and engaged in conversations with artists in France, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Antigua, Suriname, and Guadeloupe. In addition to her service on several prominent boards, she is an active member of the PAMM Fund for African American Art and serves on The Cultural Affairs Council for Miami Dade County and Florida’s Department of Cultural Affairs panels. Her awards include The African Heritage Cultural Arts Center Third Annual Calabash Amadlozi Visual Arts Award, International Businesswoman of the Year, One of South Florida’s 50 Most Powerful Black Professionals. Her most recent curation of Inter | Sectionality: Diaspora Art from The Creole which closed at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture in March January 2021, opens in the Miami Design District on February 5th, 2021, and will run through May 31, 2021.

Jerushia Graham | Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking - Atlanta, GA. Jerushia Graham is the Museum Coordinator for the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking and a working artist. The Atlanta-based artist exhibits both nationally and internationally. In addition to her curatorial efforts at the Paper Museum, she is the VP of Exhibitions/Curatorial for the North American Hand Papermakers. Graham has also been a guest curator for the Zora Neale Hurston Museum in Eatonville, FL and The Hudgens Center for Art and Learning in Duluth, GA. She was previously the Education Director for Atlanta Printmakers Studio as well as a book arts/papermaking/print professor for Kennesaw State University, as well as a foundations professor for the University of West Georgia and the Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur. Prior to her work in Georgia she served as the Museum Director and Education Coordinator for Spiral Q, an arts and social justice non-profit. In 2019, she was nominated in the category of Artistic Excellence for the inaugural Hammonds House Honors. Graham was one of five artists selected by the GA Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts exhibit at MOCA GA, Paper Routes: Women To Watch 2020. Several of her papercuts recently traveled the state of Georgia in an exhibition sponsored by the Georgia Museum of Art and Lyndon House Museum, Highlighting Contemporary Art in Georgia: Cut and Paste. She earned an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, and BFA degrees in Fabric Design and Printmaking from the University of Georgia in Athens. Graham is interested in creating spaces for socially-minded introspection and empathy through her artwork, workshops, and curatorial projects. 

2021 State Fellowships Juror Panel

Jackie Clay | Coleman Center for the Arts - York, AL. Jackie Clay is the executive director at the Coleman Center for the Arts, a contemporary arts organization that produces socially engaged public art projects in the Alabama Black Belt region. In addition to her work in Sumter County, she has organized exhibitions at the ICA LA, et al gallery (San Francisco), and the Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile). She has contributed to catalogs including Prospect 4, black is a color, and the Greenwood Art Project. She hosts Monograph, a documentary series produced by Alabama Public Television that focuses on creative practice both inside and outside the traditional arts framework.

Patsy Cox | California State University Northridge - Northridge, CA. Patsy Cox is Professor of Visual Art and Chair of Ceramics at California State University Northridge. She is an artist, educator and arts advocate. She is a former president of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and a Fellow of the Council. She is currently serving on the board of the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Pomona, California. She has participated in the Annenberg Alchemy and Alchemy+ programs for nonprofit excellence, was a Getty Scholar for the Linking Service Learning and the Visual Arts Program and has coordinated courses for the CSU Summer Arts Program. She was the curator for the 74^th Scripps Annual, Stories Without Borders: Personal Narratives in Clay. Cox is an installation-based artist who has exhibited and lectured nationally and internationally, most recently as a resident artist with Dunhuang Creative Center in Lanzhou, China culminating with the permanent collection installation piece, Huang He. She holds an MFA from the University of Delaware and BFA from Missouri University and lives and maintains a productive studio near downtown Los Angeles.

Sarah Higgins | Art Papers - Atlanta, GA. Sarah Higgins is Editor + Artistic Director of Art Papers. Previously, she was curator at the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University (2015-2018) where she produced exhibitions and publications including Tomashi Jackson: Interstate Love Song, Gut Feelings, and A View Beyond the Trees. She has curated over 40 exhibitions for institutions such as the Hessel Museum of Art, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Carlton Turner | Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) - Utica, MS. Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, arts advocate, policy shaper, lecturer, consultant, and facilitator. Carlton is the founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses arts and agriculture to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where he lives with his wife Brandi and three children.

2021 Southern Prize Juror Panel

Marcela Guerrero | Whitney Museum of American Art - New York, NY. Marcela Guerrero is Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recently, she was part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945. In summer 2018, Guerrero curated the exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art.

From 2014 to 2017 she worked as curatorial fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as research coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. Guerrero’s writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and in art journals such as ArtNexus, Caribbean Intransit, Gulf Coast, Interventions, and Diálogo.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Karen Patterson | The Fabric Workshop and Museum - Philadelphia, PA. Karen Patterson joined the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) as their inaugural curator in July 2019. Current projects include Jonathan Lyndon Chase: Big Wash; Elisabeth Kley: Minutes of Sand; His History of Art: Jayson Musson. Prior to this appointment she was the Senior Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC), Patterson has curated over fifty exhibitions, including major exhibitions such as Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values, Ebony G.Patterson: Dead Treez, several critically-reviewed site specific installations such as Joy Feasley and Paul Swenbeck: Out, Out, Phosphene Candle, Things are What We Encounter: Dr.Charles Smith + Heather Hart. Patterson completed her BA in folklore studies at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and her Masters of Art Administration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Publications include: Samara Golden: Upstairs At Steve's; Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe (2019), Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Mythologies (2017), Lee Godie: Self-Portraits (2015), Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values (2013).

Seph Rodney | Hyperallergic - New York, NY. Seph Rodney, PhD was born in Jamaica, and came of age in the Bronx, New York. He is the opinions editor and managing editor for the Sunday edition for Hyperallergic, and writes on visual art and related issues. He has also written for The New York Times, CNN Op-ed pages, American Craft Magazine and NBC Universal, and penned catalog essays for Joyce J. Scott, Teresita Fernandez, and Meleko Mokgosi. He can be heard weekly on the podcast “The American Age”. His book, The Personalization of the Museum Visit, was published by Routledge in May of 2019. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize.

2020 State Fellowships Juror Panel

Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba | New Orleans Museum of Art - New Orleans, LA
Originally from Benin City, Nigeria, Ezeluomba comes to NOMA from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, where he was the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Research Specialist in African Art. In this role, Ezeluomba collaborated with the institution’s conservation department to probe beneath the surface of the objects in the museum’s collection. Before his time in Virginia, Ezeluomba served as a consultant on the Elusive Spirits: African Masquerades exhibition at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, and worked on the Harn Museum curatorial team that produced Kongo Across the Waters, examining 500 years of cultural exchange between the Kongo, Europe, and the United States, showing the rise of Kongo as a major Atlantic presence and the transmission of Kongo culture through the transatlantic slave trade into American art. The exhibition was also shown at NOMA in 2015. Ezeluomba received a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Florida, Gainesville, specializing in historic African shrines.

Edward Hayes, Jr. | The McNay Art Museum - San Antonio, TX
From 2013-2018 Hayes was a curator for the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Southern California, where he coordinated over 50 exhibitions including Frida Kahlo: Her Photos and Relational Undercurrents, a Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition. He was curator of MOLAA’s first solo exhibitions of Chicano art, among numerous other original projects with subjects ranging from Mexican Modernism to Ana Mendieta and contemporary Latinx art. Hayes joins The McNay Art Museum after leading International Arts and Artists Traveling Exhibition Service since 2018. As Director of the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit service, he oversaw the circulation over 20 national and international traveling exhibitions, launched over ten new exhibitions, and initiated multiple collaborations with curators for future projects. Hayes holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006) and an MA in Art History from The University of Texas at San Antonio (2010).

David Houston | Art Historian & Consultant - New York, NY
Independent Brooklyn-based art historian and museum consultant. He is currently writing, consulting, and developing a non-profit organization for late-career artists and artists’ estates. He recently curated an exhibition for the Kentler International Drawing Space in New York.

Marilyn Zapf | Center for Craft - Asheville, NC
Marilyn Zapf is the Assistant Director and Curator at the Center for Craft, a national arts nonprofit headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina. She has organized over 15 and curated over 9 exhibitions for the Center’s gallery, including the nationally-traveling Made in WNC (2015) and Gee’s Bend: From Quilts to Prints (2014). Outside of the office Marilyn is an independent curator, juror, teacher, and writer. She recently curated Michael Sherrill Retrospective, which opened at The Mint Museum in Fall 2018 and is currently at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has recently taught courses on the History of Craft at Warren Wilson College. Marilyn is a Trustee of the American Crafts Council and has published articles and reviews in international publications, including Art Jewelry Form and Crafts Magazine (UK). She holds a MA in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, and a BA (English Literature) and BFA (Jewelry and Metalworking) from The University of Georgia. Her areas of research include craft, postmodernism, industry, and deindustrialization.

2020 Southern Prize Juror Panel

Pradeep Dalal | Creative Capital - New York, NY
Pradeep Dalal is an artist and educator. His work was recently included in the exhibitions I need my memories. They are my documents. at SepiaEYE, Strange Invitation at Franklin Street Works, Picturing Parallax: Photography and Video from the South Asian Diaspora in San Francisco, as well as Vision is Elastic. Thought is Elastic at Murray Guy and Fifty Artists Photograph the Future at Higher Pictures. Pradeep has also exhibited at Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai, the Herter Art Gallery in Amherst, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, TART in San Francisco, and Orchard and PS122 Gallery in New York. His photographic work is included in Blind Spot 43 and Cabinet 52. His project “Notes on Bhopal, MP” was included in the book Chandigarh is in India (Shoestring Publishers, 2016), and an essay “A Bifocal Frame of Reference” was included in the book Western Artists and India (Thames and Hudson, 2013). He is a recipient of the Tierney Fellowship, and holds an MFA from ICP/Bard College and a MArch from MIT. He is co-chair of Photography at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

Grace Deveney | Prospect New Orleans - New Orleans, LA
Grace Deveney is a curator and art historian, who recently relocated to New Orleans to serve as Associate Curator for Prospect.5. Previously, she was Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Exhibitions at the MCA Chicago include: Direct Message: Art, Language and Power (2019); Groundings (2018; with Tara Aisha Willis); as well as presentations of the work of Christina Quarles (2020); Paul Pfeiffer (2017); and Amanda Williams (2017). She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Northwestern University, whose dissertation explores relationships between popular television of the 1970s-1990s and work of Howardena Pindell, Tony Cokes and Stan Douglas, three black artists who interrogate the politics of representation.

Jean W. McLaughlin | Artist & Consultant - NC
Recently retired, Jean McLaughlin led Penland School of Crafts through a period of growth and evolution for 20 years. She is currently exploring her own creative voice and serving as a volunteer on boards of the American Craft Council, the Community Foundation of Western NC, the UNC School of the Arts, Wildacres Retreat, and United States Artists. During her tenure with the Penland School of Crafts, she raised $31,751,000 to complete the Campaign for Penland’s Future as well as over $11 million for the Preserve Penland Campaign—each to grow the endowment, build scholarships, address critical facility and infrastructure needs, and increase annual giving. New studio facilities were constructed for iron, wood, letterpress, printmaking, books, drawing and painting, photography and papermaking. Existing studios for textiles, metals and clay were updated. New housing facilities were built and existing ones renovated. The school became a district on the National Register of Historic Places, ensuring long-term commitment to preserving Penland’s historic fabric. Prior to 1998, Jean worked with artists and visual arts organizations as the Visual Arts Director of the NC Arts Council for 16 years. Her bachelor’s degree in studio art from the University of NC at Chapel Hill was followed by two years of classes in design and textiles at the California College of the Arts (formerly CCAC) and a master’s degree in liberal studies from NC State University. She is a life-long advocate for the needs of artists.

2019 State Fellowships Juror Panel

Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd | Visiting Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University - Stillwater, OK

Katherine Jentleson | Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art,
High Museum of Art - Atlanta, GA

Radhika Subramaniam | Associate Professor of Visual Culture, Parsons School of Design - New York City, NY

Ben Thompson | Deputy Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville - Jacksonville, FL

Joey Yates | Curator, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft - Louisville, KY

2019 Southern Prize Juror Panel

Wassan Al-Khudhairi | Chief Curator, Contemporary Art Museum - St. Louis, MO

René Paul Barilleaux | Head of Curatorial Affairs, McNay Art Museum - San Antonio, TX

Leslie Umberger | Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum - Washington, DC

2018 State Fellowships Juror Panel

Jan Davidson | Director (retired), John C. Campbell Folk School - Brasstown, NC

Lauren Haynes | Curator of Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art - Bentonville, AR

Ade Omotosho | Ford Foundation Curatorial Fellow, Pérez Art Museum - Miami, FL

Mark Scala | Chief Curator, Frist Center for the Visual Arts - Nashville, TN

Scott Stulen | Director and President, Philbrook Museum of Art - Tulsa, OK

2018 Southern Prize Juror Panel

César García | Co-founder, Executive & Artistic Director, The Mistake Room - Los Angeles, CA

Monica Moses | Editor in Chief, American Craft - Minneapolis, MN

Trevor Schoonmaker | Chief Curator and Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University - Durham, NC

2017 State Fellowships Juror Panel

Jan Davidson | Director (retired), John C. Campbell Folk School - Brasstown, NC

Erin J. Gilbert | Independent curator, critic, and cultural producer - Chicago, IL

Gia M. Hamilton | Director, Joan Mitchell Center - New Orleans, LA

Lauren Haynes | Curator, Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in - Bentonville, AR

Mark Scala | Chief Curator, Frist Center for the Visual Arts - Nashville, TN

2017 Southern Prize Juror Panel

Miranda Lash | Curator, Contemporary Art, Speed Art Museum - Louisville, KY 

Monica Moses | Editor in Chief, American Craft - Minneapolis, MN

Dominique Nahas | Independent critic and curator - Brooklyn, NY