Join The Arc Baltimore and a panel of prominent art leaders on Tuesday, October 11 at 7 pm for a discussion ensuring that access is always part of the DEAI (diversity, equity, access & inclusion) conversation, particularly in the art community.

Panelists will expound on their curated artwork for The Arc’s Art in the Round event featuring artwork created by artists with disabilities. In addition, they will share the DEAI initiatives at their respective institutions and their connection to The Arc Baltimore and the disability community in Baltimore.

Both live transcription and an ASL interpreter will be available.

Art in the

PANELISTS

Sandra Abbott

Sandra Abbott is Curator of Collections & Outreach at the Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she also teaches Museum Studies as Affiliate Faculty of the UMBC Department of Visual Arts.

As the curator of the Center’s outreach program, Abbott leads UMBC students in various service learning projects throughout the Baltimore community. Past curatorial projects include creative aging, storytelling, and exhibitions with Baltimore City seniors, curatorial collaborations with community organizations, artists, and landlords to fill unoccupied urban retail space with artwork by college students or area school children, and curating an Educational Outreach Program that brings school kids to UMBC art galleries and parks to experience world-class art installations or to engage creatively with nature.

Abbott was formerly a member of Baltimore City’s Public Art Commission and the Steering Committee for the Highlandtown Arts & Entertainment District. She served on the artist selection jury for the former Baltimore Red Line’s Art in Transit Program and received the Baltimore/Washington Collegetown Network’s Annual Award for Service-Learning and Civic Engagement.

Previously, Abbott worked in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and graduated from Harvard University’s Museum Studies Program. She also studied at and worked for the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an alumna of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Advanced Level Internship Program, and she holds a graduate degree in Art History.

Andre Bradley

Andre Bradley lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He is a graduate of Ithaca College (MFA 2020) the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA 2015) and has completed coursework at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MFA 2023) During his studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Bradley was named a George Ciscle Scholar in Curatorial Practice, and during his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, Bradley was named a president’s scholar and a recipient of the T.C. Colley Award for Photographic Excellence. Bradley’s book Dark Archives was shortlisted for the Photo-Text Book Award at Les Recontres De La Photographie and the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award, both in 2016.

Bradley has been a fellow at The Arc Baltimore, Image Text Ithaca, and the Tilt Institute for The Contemporary Image, his work is in the collections of public and private art collections and libraries including the RISD Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Scripps College’s Ella Strong Denison Library Rare Book Room.

George Ciscle, MICA, Curator-in-Residence, Emeritus

George Ciscle has mounted groundbreaking exhibitions and taught courses in the fine arts and humanities for close to 50 years. He was the founder and director of The Contemporary, an “un-museum,” which challenges existing conventions for exhibiting art in temporary non-traditional sites.

From 1997 – 2017 he served as Curator-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), consulting on the development of community-based and public programming concentrating on exploring new models for connecting art, artists, and audiences. At MICA Ciscle also founded and directed the Exhibition Development Seminar, Curatorial Studies Concentration, and MFA in Curatorial Practice.

Joy Davis

Joy Davis is an experienced curator, curatorial director, and an independent scholar of cultural and fashion history. In her tenure at the Walters Art Museum she, along with her staff, drove the museum forward with digital programming that encompassed some of the most diverse programming in the museum’s history. Since 2018, she has run her gallery and programming space Waller Gallery. From 2015 to the present she co-hosts and produces Unravel Podcast, a fashion history and culture podcast. Her scholarly projects include subject matter that is underdeveloped in academia and transcends many fields of study: fashion, history, art, media, and performance among people of color throughout history. She received her B.A. degrees in History and Media Studies from the University of Maryland, and her M.A. in Fashion and Museum Studies from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

She believes that a higher education should not be a prerequisite to create, distribute, or communicate art. Joy would like to bring in community and audience members into dialogue through programming, exhibitions, and workshops amplifying Black voices and other voices of color.

Carla Dunlap

Carla Dunlap is currently the President of Baltimore Clayworks’ Board of Directors. She served as Senior Program Director for the Maryland State Arts Council from 1994 to 2015, where she led the arts council’s flagship Grants for Organizations program which supports Maryland’s arts infrastructure through operating grants to more than 250 Maryland arts organizations. She also managed the council’s Individual Artist Awards program and her own work as an artist motivated her to create additional opportunities for visual artists. She developed and curated the arts council’s Gallery Program and created one of the first electronic artists’ registries at a State Arts Council. In conjunction with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, she co-edited the reports State Arts Agencies Grant and Services for Individual Artists, a national survey, and Technology Needs Assessment of Maryland Artists and Arts Organizations.

Formerly Dunlap was the Director of the Howard County Center for the Arts. She was a full-time ceramic artist and teacher. Her Raku work has been exhibited nationally.

Dunlap holds an M.F.A. in Ceramic Arts from Antioch University and a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Maryland with a focus on printmaking and a minor in art history.

Ernest Shaw

Being a native of West Baltimore has taught Artist Ernest Shaw the meaning of perseverance, community, and integrity. As a product of Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore School for the Arts, Morgan State University, and Howard University Shaw recognizes the importance of using his skills and talents for the betterment of others, not simply for his own self-aggrandizement. For Ernest, teaching is also an artistic medium.

Artist Statement:

Being an image-maker affords me the opportunity to produce work that highlights the humanity of the viewer by illustrating the humanity of the subject. My creative process focuses on the interaction between the work and its audience. My goal is for the receiver to experience the mystery of creation while interacting with the portrait. The work’s evolution to becoming art has everything to do with the dance between the painting and the receiver.

My primary subjects reflect the multiple aspects of the Black/Africanist experience in the context of a society that confines Blackness to being the antithesis of whiteness and a response to racialized subjugation. Authentic portrayals of the Black body are of particular interest to me simply because there is no other subject I find to be as complex, misrepresented, and misunderstood.