Alma Ruiz is former senior curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, where she curated numerous exhibitions focusing on the postwar period in the United States, Italy and Latin America, as well as on emerging artists.
In addition to having served as a guest curator at the Fundación Jumex, Mexico City; the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., and the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, she has acted as a juror for numerous biennials in Latin America, including the V Panama Biennial, the Tamayo Biennial in Mexico City, and the Second Exhibition of Central American Emerging Artists in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Ruiz has also been a panelist for The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Creative Capital Foundation in New York, and the U.S. Fund for Culture in Mexico City and is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami.
She is currently the curator for the 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala City for June 2016.
Kibum Kim is a lawyer and writer interested in the interactions of art, culture, politics, law, and business.
He is a Co-Founder and Director of the NEWD Art Show, an artist-centric art fair in New York showcasing artist-run spaces and nonprofits.
Prior to receiving his JD at the NYU School of Law, Kibum worked as an M&A investment banker at Société Générale and as a freelance journalist covering fashion and cultural trends.
His writing has appeared in the “Sunday Styles” section of The New York Times, Salon, Foreign Policy, and Hyperallergic.
He is a former Co-Chair of the Young Lawyers Section of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Committee of the New York State Bar Association and serves on the board of Momenta Art.
Sarah Conley Odenkirk is associate director of the Center for Management in the Creative Industries and assistant professor of Art Business at the Drucker School. Odenkirk has been practicing law in the area of fine art for almost two decades and has advised numerous artists, art-related businesses, arts organizations and administrative bodies in all matters related to the creation, sale, and management of artwork in private and public realms. She has represented clients at all stages of their creative and business development.
She is the author of A Surprisingly Interesting Book About Contracts (AMMO Books, 2013) and regularly publishes in legal journals and arts publications on issues related to the arts and art law. In 2013, she completed the compilation of a database containing executive summaries and underlying documentation for public art in private development policies and ordinances nationwide. The database is available on her website.
Sarah is admitted to practice in California, New York, Oregon, District of Columbia and Washington. She is also fluent in French.
Publications
A Surprisingly Interested Book About Contracts: For Artists and Other Creatives. AMMO Books, LLC. 2014.
“Insurance Issues for Design in Pubic Art,” International Sculpture Center Web Special, April 2010.
Jonathan T. D. Neil is the director of the Center for Management in the Creative Industries at Claremont Graduate University, a partnership between Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Los Angeles, the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, the Getty Leadership Institute, and the School of Arts and Humanities of Claremont Graduate University.
In addition to his academic work, Neil also serves as associate editor for ArtReview magazine and as editor of the Held Essays on Visual Art for The Brooklyn Rail. From 2008 until 2014 he served as executive editor at The Drawing Center in New York. In 2005 he co-founded Boyd Level LLC, a private curatorial firm and consultancy that specializes in contemporary art.
Neil has a PhD in 20th-century Art History from Columbia University and a B.Arch from Cornell University. He has taught courses in modern and contemporary art and architectural history, the international art market, critical writing, critical theory, and the history of photography at Columbia University, Parsons The New School for Design, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York. He is a member of the New York Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA)
Laura Zucker has been executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission since 1992. The Arts Commission provides leadership in cultural services of all disciplines for the largest county in the United States, encompassing 88 municipalities. In addition to funding the largest arts internship program for undergraduates in the country in conjunction with the Getty Foundation, the Arts Commission administers a $4.1 million grants program that funds more than 350 nonprofit arts organizations annually; provides leadership and staffing to support the regional blueprint to restore arts education to all 81 school districts in Los Angeles County, Arts for All; programs the John Anson Ford Theatres; and implements the county’s civic art program. The Arts Commission also produces free community programs, including the L.A. Holiday Celebration, which emanates from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center and is broadcast on public television, and a year-round music program that funds more than 50 free concerts each year in public sites.
In 2005, Zucker was on special assignment with Eli Broad to develop Arts + Culture LA to market LA as a cultural destination. Previously, she headed the California Cultural Tourism Initiative, which marketed the arts of California’s three urban regions domestically and internationally. She is the author of a regional study of individual artists as part of the California Arts Council’s economic impact study on the arts.
Zucker is on the board of the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE), an officer of the Ford Theatre Foundation board, a member of the Marketing Advisory Council for the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, a founding member of the board of Arts for LA, on the advisory board for the Angell Foundation, and a member of the United States Urban Arts Federation.
Zucker was previously the executive director of the Ventura Arts Council and was producing director of the Back Alley Theatre for ten years. She received a BA in English from Barnard College and attended the Yale School of Drama.