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Team

Ashley Cope

Ashley is a PhD student in the Department of Art History and Archaeology studying American art and visual culture with Dr. Tess Korobkin. She received her BA in Art History and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2019. She defended her thesis, "Neither Woman Nor Man: Negotiations of the Third Sex in Western Visual Culture, 1900-1930,” and earned her MA from the University of Maryland in Spring 2022. Ashley has held fellowships at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Weisman Art Museum where she served as the 2019-2020 Gerry and Lisa O'Brien Curatorial Fellow.

Caroline Kipp

Caroline Kipp is a first-year Ph.D. student studying Modern and Contemporary American Art under the supervision of Dr. Saggese. Before coming to the University of Maryland, she completed an M.L.A. in Museum Studies at Harvard University, and a B.F.A. in Fibers from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Since 2019, Kipp has been the Curator of Contemporary Art at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum in Washington, DC.

From 2017-2019, Kipp held multiple positions in the departments of Contemporary Art and Textiles & Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She curated and co-curated numerous installations and exhibitions including Beyond the Loom: Fiber as Sculpture/Subversive Threads as part of Women Take the Floor and Perception is the Medium. She currently serves on the boards of the Textile Society of America (TSA) and the James Renwick Alliance for Craft (JRA).

Cléa Massiani

Cléa Massiani is a French curator and art professional formally based in San Francisco, CA.

She is the founder and co-director of Bass and Reiner Gallery, currently located at the Minnesota Street Project complex in San Francisco, a curatorial space dedicated to fostering dynamic dialogues in the Bay Area art scene and emerging artists. Massiani has curated and co-curated several exhibitions in museums and galleries and held professional art positions both in Europe and the United States. Most recently, she was appointed Curator and Exhibition Coordinator at Creativity Explored (SF, CA), an art center for artists with cognitive disabilities.

She holds a B.A. in History and Art History and an M.A. in History from The Sorbonne University in Paris, France, and an M.A. in Exhibition and Museum Studies from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA. She now is a PhD student at the University of Maryland where currently works for the David C. Driskell Center.

Dominic Pearson

In the pursuit of the practical application of concepts that center Blackness in transnational contexts. Dominic is particularly interested in how multi-sensorial installations bring together visuality and sound to reflect the multidimensionality of Black Diasporic Identity. How do we hear and see Diaspora? What informs the way we listen to images and see sound?

Gabrielle Tillenburg

Gabrielle Tillenburg (she/her) is a MA/PhD student studying modern and contemporary Caribbean and diasporic art under the guidance of Dr. Abigail McEwen. Her interests include artist activism in independence movements, interpretations of time in photographic media, and contemporary use of craft materials. Her curatorial projects have included Re∙Cast: Sculptural Works from the AMA Collection at UMD Art Gallery, Soft Serve at Willow Street Gallery, public art installations at Torpedo Factory, and Past Process at Strathmore. Her work has been published in Sequitur and Artlines journals. Gabrielle was most recently selected as the Fall 2022 Bresler Curator in Residence at VisArts in Rockville, MD. She has held the Catto Curatorial Internship and Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Internship, both at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. From 2015-2020, she worked as the Exhibitions Coordinator at Strathmore coordinating and curating group and solo exhibitions. She holds a BFA in Film from the University of Central Florida.

JooHee Kim

JooHee Kim (she/her/hers) is a Ph.D. student and Flagship Fellow in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland in College Park, studying contemporary American art under the supervision of Dr. Jordana Moore Saggese. A key focus of JooHee's current research is the identity and diaspora of immigrant artists through photography and performance. JooHee completed her M.A. in Museum Studies at New York University, after finishing her first M.A. in Art History at the University of Chicago. Besides her academic career, JooHee has been a part of Smarthistory, the Museum of Modern Art, Joan Jonas Knowledge Base, and the AHL Foundation.

Professor Jordana Moore Saggese

Dr. Jordana Moore Saggese is Professor of American Art and the Interim Chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary American art, with an emphasis on expressions of Blackness. Professor Saggese's first two books have centered on the work of the contemporary American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88): Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art  (University of California Press, 2014) and The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews and Critical Responses (University of California Press, 2021). Saggese's current book project Game On: Boxing, Race, and Masculinity maps the visual terrain of racial ideology in the United States, paying particular attention to the intersecting discourses of blackness, masculinity, and sport in the late nineteenth century.

Magdelena Mastrandrea

Magdalena (Maggie) Mastrandrea  is a second year M.A. student studying modern Japanese art under the guidance of Dr. Alicia Volk. In 2019, she graduated with a B.A. in Art History from Loyola University Chicago, where she was awarded the Mary S. Lawson award for Outstanding Art History thesis. Her current research interests include the global development of modernism and modern Japanese painting.

Maura Callahan

Maura Callahan is a PhD student studying contemporary American art under Professor Joshua Shannon. She received her MA in Art History & Archaeology from UMD in 2022 and her BFA in Painting and Humanistic Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2015. She is a curator, writer, and critic, having previously worked as an arts editor for the Baltimore City Paper and the Baltimore Beat. In 2018, she was awarded the Toni Beauchamp Prize in Critical Art Writing by Gulf Coast, and has written essays and reviews for Hyperallergic, Momus, Burnaway, and BmoreArt, among other publications. She currently works at the Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland.

Montia Daniels

Montia Daniels (she/they) is a Ph.D. student in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She's a student of Black feminist theory and is committed to learning more about herself and others, authentically, through research and community work. She is a McNair Fellow interested in oral history, religion and Black cultural studies.