Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance announces second round of Leadership Fellowship Awards
Middletown, Conn.—Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) has announced the second round of Leadership Fellowship Awards, presented to Deborah Goffe and Victoria Carrasco, who are both second-year Master’s students of the program.
The recipients were selected by a committee of ICPP faculty, senior staff, and curatorial advisors based on their performance and scholarship during their first year of the Master’s program; the viability/originality of their proposed fellowship projects; demonstrated need; and fit with their partner organizations. The fellowship awards help provide a pathway to leadership for historically underrepresented perspectives in the professional world of performance curation. Upon graduation, the fellows will develop and execute a curatorial project at an arts organization, and will continue in this role for up to one year. The fellowships offer the opportunity for the actualization of work developed by students in their thesis or practicum coursework. The Leadership Fellowship supports ICPP’s mission of diversifying the workforce in arts organizations, and expanding the curatorial perspectives in performing arts presenting.
"We are thrilled to announce that Deborah Goffe and Victoria Carrasco will be the next ICPP Leadership Fellows," said Sarah Curran, Director of the Center for the Arts, and Managing Director of ICPP. "They each bring a unique curatorial sensibility that brings attention and care to the artistic production of a specific place – Victoria in Montréal, and Deborah in greater New England. We are grateful that the Ford Foundation can help broaden the field of performance curation by giving these curators the opportunity to take what they have learned in ICPP and apply it directly to their curatorial practice in their respective communities."
"ICPP is thrilled to support two of our graduating students in order to realize projects that weave together their respective research expertise and professional activities," said Noémie Solomon, Program Director at ICPP. "Working closely with local organizations and artistic communities, Goffe and Carrasco take into account marginalized bodies and movements occurring at thresholds of cultural visibility to develop forceful practices of inclusion. These practices make a vital intervention in the field of performance curation by broadening its methods and concerns, and shifting its creative and critical trajectories."
"I am grateful for the support of the fellowship, and am eager to implement ideas that have been incubated through my ICPP experience," said Deborah Goffe, who will be partnering with Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she is an Assistant Professor of Modern/Contemporary Dance. "I look forward to carrying that energy forward into my proposed engagement with dance artists of color in exchange around ideas related to land, body, creative capacities, and social connection as survival strategies." She will facilitate a program of exchanges of artistic processes, works-in-progress, discussion, and social engagement with artists from New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts in April 2020.
"I want to challenge performance presentation in different spaces, and question the idea of legacy in the field of performance," said Victoria Carrasco, who will be partnering with Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporain in Montréal, Québec, Canada, where she is a Gallery Manager and Events Coordinator. She will present a series of events and various collaborations through live mediums, based on the idea of making Montréal’s material past visible.
The first recipient of the fellowship in January 2018 was Ali Rosa-Salas, who partnered with New York’s Abrons Arts Center.
The Leadership Fellowship program was made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation, whose funding has furthered ICPP's efforts to advance diversity among participants, and to amplify the graduate program's impact on the field of performance.
About the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance
Introduced as a pilot initiative in 2011, the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University is the first institute of its kind, a center for the academic study of the presentation and contextualization of contemporary performance. The low-residency program offers students a Master's degree in innovative and relevant curatorial approaches to developing and presenting time-based art. ICPP encourages emerging curators to enrich their understanding of intellectually rigorous, innovative, and artist-centered curatorial models. The mix of instructors—artists, scholars, curators, cultural leaders, writers, and theorists—is intended to spark new possibilities and connections both intellectually and professionally. Instructors provide theoretical and practical tools for students to deepen their research methodologies through reading, writing, viewings, and discussion. Students simultaneously put ideas into practice in their professional lives, developing responsive curatorial practices that address the interdisciplinary nature of performance work today.
For more information about the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance, please click here.