Summer Think Tank

Guest Curator: Limor Tomer, vice president of programming and production, Segerstrom Center for the Arts

This week takes a critical look “under the hood and under the carpet” at live performance within the context of museum practice. Are museums increasingly embracing performance as a vital component of their programming?  If so, how and why?  If not, what are the barriers? Additional topics will include the power and potential of performance to diversify institutions and audiences, the realities of staging performance in museums, the relationship between performance and the object-centered context of museums, the issues of collecting performance, and more.

Guest Curator: Ed Patuto, director for audience engagement, The Broad Museum  
 
Bringing together a group of both cultural leaders and educators, this week’s conversations will examine new and emerging models for incubating, developing and presenting performance art across global institutions. In taking an international perspective, the group will consider what possibilities exist or might otherwise be developed for exchange between countries, cultures and communities, as has always been the foundation of American art. Particular emphasis will be placed on both the pedagogical impact of these new models and modes of exchange, in terms of how we approach both the teaching of performance and the performance of teaching as well as how performers and presenters can create new opportunities for engaging audiences and communities. 

Guest Curator: Dell Marie Hamilton, artist, writer, curator; interim director of Cooper Gallery at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research  
 
This week's conversations are inspired by guest curator Dell Marie Hamilton and collaborator Angela Counts current project, which engages speculative fiction, performance and public art to retell the story of Mark, Phillis, and Phoebe, three enslaved individuals who were tried in 1755 Boston for the murder of their master. Bringing together a group of Black artists, scholars, curators and cultural leaders, the cohort will be invited to engage with performance as a mode through which to contextualize America as nation, geography, project, and myth. In particular, the group will contend with the relationship between performance and the camera, which can be understood not only as a technology of documentation but also as a witness (i.e. the lens as audience). Rooted in the specificities of Black performance, the cohort will also consider the multiplicity of roles that Black practitioners must assume in order to build and sustain a career in contemporary art particularly as they grapple with the implications of American authoritarianism.

Guest Curator: David Thomson, interdisciplinary performing artist  
 
This week’s conversations look to (re)imagine sustainability within an arts ecosystem that is at once shifting and breaking down. Bringing together a group of artists from across various disciplines, the cohort will be invited to consider what kinds of resources are needed beyond money? How are we making work, and who do we imagine that will change? What is the new relationality that is called for? Grounded in the belief that artists can be the creators of their futures, the group will contend with the "What if…" that we face in this present and beyond.

Guest Curator: Kristin Juarez, PhD, senior research specialist, Getty Research Institute  

This week takes as its focus the legacy of experimental choreographer and video artist Blondell Cummings, in particular her solo works, including Chicken Soup (1981). Exploring documentation of Chicken Soup, including performance recordings, video art, and restaging, the cohort will consider the archive’s role in transmission and exhibition of performance. Together, the cohort will examine dance records and their continual transitions between event, document, and art object. From the performance venue to the museum, participants will share the various forms of archival stewardship required to preserve an artist’s legacy.

Guest Curator: Cynthia Post Hunt, artist and curator of performance, Crystal Bridges & the Momentary  
 
For this final week of the Summer Think Tank, we will look at the role institutions play in shaping the contemporary performance art landscape through commissioning, producing, archiving, and/or collecting. Participants from across the field will consider the defining edges of performance art and how it is shaped by navigating the various internal systems across museums, galleries, festivals, and collections through budgeting, marketing, the division of labor across departments, and the allocation of space and time. Together the cohort will be invited to think about the valuation of performance within the institutions and how it is we make space for both artists and audiences.

Guest Curator: Hannah Haynes, professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, MCLA; 2025-26 LIAA Fellow  
 
In Audre Lorde’s 1983 address “Learning from the ‘60s,” Lorde celebrated the community-centered work of Malcolm X. Lorde encouraged us to look towards the past while studying the present. With an “energy for the present,” we seek creative and scholarly abstracts that “metabolize” scholarship, history, and creative praxis that consider “tensions within diversity.” We seek papers that (re)frame these tensions within art, history, culture and society, and the US academy that “metabolize” the struggles of the past and present, considering the role of community in activating social, artistic, and political change. Possible paper topics may problematize or consider the multiple valences of “frame” and “frameworks” across genre and medium: such as, artwork frames, academic frameworks, architectural frames, bodily frames, racial frames, etc.  
 
NEASA is the regional chapter of the American Studies Association (ASA) representing Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. This chapter organizes a number of events and awards including an annual late spring conference, a collection of prizes for recent books and essays, and an annual fall colloquium.  
 
Conference August 5–6, 2025  
Keynote: Dr. Brian Michael Murphy, Williams College, “Black Vermont.”  
 
The tentative program will be updated as more information is available. Panel times/days will not change.   
 
Registration:  
All participants must register for the conference, noting name tag preferences and dietary restrictions. Please note that the conference fee is waived for students and contingent faculty. For tenured/tenure-track faculty, we’ve instituted a pay-what-you-can system, with a recommended fee of $45. After you fill out this form, you’ll be redirected to the payment page.

Guest Curators  
Dell Marie Hamilton, artist, writer, curator; interim director of the Cooper Gallery at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research  
 
Hannah Haynes, professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, MCLA; 2025–26 LIAA Fellow  
 
Cynthia Post Hunt, artist and curator of artists-in-residence and performance, Crystal Bridges & the Momentary  
 
Kristin Juarez, PhD, senior research specialist, Getty Research Institute  
 
Ed Patuto, director for audience engagement, The Broad Museum  
 
David Thomson, interdisciplinary performing artist  
 
Limor Tomer, vice president of programming and production, Segerstrom Center for the Arts    
 
Fellows  
Marilyn Arsem, artist  

Tiffany E. Barber, assistant professor of African American Art, UCLA

Sidra Bell, artist

John Bordel, artist liaison, Performance Art Museum

AB Brown, assistant professor, Performance, Theater and Dance, Colby College

The Last Physician of Images (Ernest A. Bryant III), artist and critic; 2025-26 LIAA Fellow 

Rashida Bumbray, curator and choreographer

Brad Burgess, artist and artistic director, The Living Theatre

Sandra L. Burton, chair of dance department, Williams College

Rachel Chanoff, founding director, The Office

Elizabeth Cline, executive director, Wild Up

Angela Counts, playwright and filmmaker

Helga Davis, artist

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, poet and artist

Rosalie Doubal, senior curator, international art (Performance & Participation), Tate Modern

Kristy Edmunds, director, MASS MoCA

Zachary Fabri, artist

Rachel Fine, executive director, Yale Schwarzman Center

Peggy Fogelman, director, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Danielle Forest, director, Pace Gallery

Marjani Forté-Saunders, choregrapher

Martin Gonzales, artist

Jonathan González, artist

Rujeko Hockley, associate curator, Whitney Museum of American Art

Avery Willis Hoffman, founder & artistic director of Avery Productions

Judy Hussie-Taylor, executive director & chief curator, Danspace Project

Sarah Jones, Lulu C. and Anthony W. Wang Head of Live Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Darin Klein, associate director of events and programs, The Broad

Autumn Knight, artist

Bronwyn Lace, artist and co-founder, The Centre for the Less Good Idea

Teresa McKinney, Diamond Family Director of the Arts, Colby College

Edgar Miramontes, executive and artistic director, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA

Seta Morton, program director & associate curator, Danspace Project

Dorothy Moss, founding director, The Hung Liu Estate

Jennifer Harrison Newman, associate artistic director, Yale Schwarzman Center

Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Cori Olinghouse, artist, archivist, and curator

taisha paggett, artist and choreographer

Will Rawls, artist, choreographer, and associate professor of dance, UCLA

Guy Robertson, curator and co-director, Mahler & LeWitt Studios

Lauren Rosati, associate curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Legacy Russell, executive director & chief curator, The Kitchen; 2024-25 LIAA Fellow

Russell Salmon, director of public programming, Hauser & Wirth

Gwynn Shanks, assistant professor, Performance, Theater and Dance, Colby College

Kyera Singleton, executive director, The Royall House and Slave Quarters

Kwabena Slaughter, producer, artist, and PhD candidate at George Washington University

Luke Stewart, artist

Jackie Terrassa, Carolyn Muzzy Director, Colby College Museum of Art

Julie Tolentino, artist 

Xavier Tavera, artist

Nat Trotman, curator of performance and media, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Masha Turchinsky, director, Hudson River Museum

Samuel Vasquez, director, Performance Art Museum

Anna Martine Whitehead, artist and writer

Tara Aisha Willis, curator, writer, and artist

Jordan Abel (Nisga’a)  
 
Lazaro Arvizu Jr. (Tongva)  
 
Maya Tihtiyas Attean (Penobscot)  
 
Kalyn Barnoski (Cherokee Nation / Muscogee descent)  
 
Riel Bellow (Métis)  
 
edxi betts (Blackfoot)  
 
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini)  
 
Susan Blight (Anishinaabe, Couchiching First Nation)  
 
Clementine Bordeaux (Sičáŋǧu Lakótapi (Rosebud Sioux Tribe))  
 
Mary V. Bordeaux (Sicangu/Oglala Lakota)  
 
Sháńdíín Brown (Diné)  
 
Jeremy Dennis (Shinnecock Indian Nation)  
 
Oscar Diaz  
 
Demian DinéYazhi’ (Diné)  
 
Keisha Erwin (Nîhithaw)  
 
Noelle Garcia (Klamath/Modoc/Paiute)  
 
Haley Greenfeather English (Ojibwe)  
 
Hapistinna Graci Horne (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Hunkpapa Lakota/Dakota)  
 
Katie Janns  
 
Jared Lank (Mi’kmaq)  
 
Lehuauakea (Kanaka Maoli)  
 
Juan Lucero (Isleta Pueblo)  
 
Leah Mata-Fragua (yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (Northern Chumash))  
 
America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)  
 
Ramey Mize  
 
Alivia Moore (Penobscot)  
 
Michael Namingha  
 
Cecily Nicholson  
 
SJ Norman  
 
Natani Notah (Diné)  
 
Mali Obomsawin (Odanak First Nation)  
 
Ed Patuto  
 
Katherine Paul (Swinomish/Iñupiaq)  
 
Ann Pollard Ranco (Penobscot)  
 
Emma Robbins (Diné)  
 
Dylan Robinson (xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah))  
 
fabian romero (P’urhepécha)  
 
Grace Rosario Perkins (Diné)  
 
Lynn Daphne Rudolph (Khoi)  
 
Lokotah Sanborn (Penobscot)  
 
Theresa Secord (Penobscot)  
 
Pınar Ateş Sinopoulos-Lloyd (Wanka)  
 
Sarah Sockbeson (Penobscot)  
 
Anna Tsouhlarakis (Navajo/Creek)  
 
Arielle Twist (Nehiyaw)  
 
Marina Tyquiengco (Chamoru)

KJ Abudu, curator, writer, and critic

Tiffany E. Barber, scholar, curator, critic

Jordan Benissan, owner, Me Lon Togo, Rockland, Maine

Jordia Benjamin, deputy director, Indigo Arts Alliance

Joy Bivins, director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Diedrick Brackens, artist

Micha Broadnax, archivist

Bridget R. Cooks, scholar and curator of American art

Robert Cozzolino, curator

Dominique Duroseau, performance artist

Ayana Evans, performance artist

Josh T Franco, artist and art historian

Genevieve Gaignard, artist

Dell Marie Hamilton, artist, writer, curator; interim director of the Cooper Gallery at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research  

Heather Hart, artist

Abram Jackson, director of interpretation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Eleanor Kipping, performance artist

M. Lamar, performance artist

Tsedaye Makonnen, performance artist

Dave Mallari, owner, Sinful Kitchen, Portland, Maine

Devin Malone, director of public programs and community engagement, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

Denise Markonish, chief curator at MASS MoCA

Daniel Minter, co-founder, artist director, Indigo Arts Alliance

Marcia Minter, co-founder, chief officer of strategic growth and innovation, Indigo Arts Alliance

Kelli Morgan, curator, educator, and social justice activist

Ashley Page, artist and studio and program manager, Indigo Arts Alliance

January Parkos Arnall, curator, performance and public practice, MCA Chicago

Jordan Kendall Parks, artist

Ed Patuto, director of audience engagement, the Broad, Los Angeles

Verónica A. Pérez, artist and administrative assistant, Indigo Arts Alliance

Louis Pickens, owner, Black Betty’s Bistro, Portland, Maine

Veronica Pounds, graphic designer

Kenny Rivero, artist

Xaviera Simmons, artist

Delphine Sims, assistant curator of photography, SFMOMA

Nyugen E. Smith, performance artist

TK Smith, curator, writer, and cultural historian

Papay Solomon, artist

Limor Tomer, vice president of programming and production, Segerstrom Center for the Arts  

Jina Valentine, visual artist and educator

Liat Yossifor, artist