Meet the Speakers:

Megan Fontanella (she/her) is Curator, Modern Art and Provenance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her research encompasses late nineteenth- through mid-twentieth-century European and U.S. avant-gardes, with a particular focus on dealer networks and collecting patterns. Megan additionally serves on the Guggenheim’s Sustainability Leadership Team. She recently led a comprehensive carbon emissions study of the 2022 Cecilia Vicuña exhibition that provided critical benchmarking for the museum and called for innovative practices to combat the climate crisis.

Kim Kraczon, Director of Waste and Materials, Ki Culture, Speaker 

Kim Kraczon is a conservator of modern materials and contemporary art specializing in sustainable practices in the art sector. Kraczon’s area of expertise and primary focus in the field of sustainability is mitigating the environmental burden of materials and methods in art production, exhibitions, and fine arts shipping. Kraczon is the Director of Materials at Ki Culture, advisor to Gallery Climate Coalition, and founding member of Gallery Climate Coalition Berlin e.V. 

Nnenna Okore (PhD) is a Professor at Chicago’s North Park University. Straddling art, research, and teaching, Okore engages ecological problems through her arts-based participatory practice. As an internationally acclaimed artist, Okore has been involved in numerous environmental art projects and exhibitions designed to produce research, dialogue, and artmaking about current waste issues. Largely deriving inspiration from her natural surroundings, Okore creates delicate works of art using biodegradable materials like bioplastics to engender awareness about sustainable practices in the art field.

Nnenna Okore has a B.A. from the University of Nigeria, an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. from Monash University. Added to numerous national and international awards, Okore is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award and Creative Victoria Creators Fund. Her works and public art have been featured in major venues, such as the Museum of Art and Design, NY; Spelman Museum of Fine Art, Museu Afro Brasil, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, the Bruges Triennial, the Chengdu International Biennial, Moody Center of Art, Bradbury Art Museum, and more recently at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art.

Sarah's research focuses on human-animal relations and representations of wildlife in contemporary art, exhibitions and museum display, particularly with regards to ecological concerns. She has published on extinction and wildlife conservation issues in artistic and curatorial practice and is co-founder of the Curating the Sea research project, which resulted in a co-edited special issue of the Journal of Curatorial Studies (2020)and Oceans (2023) for the Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press Documents of Contemporary Art Series.

 Meet the Fellows:

Niv Allon, Associate Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Niv Allon is an Associate Curator in the Department of Egyptian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he focuses on the display and interpretation of Ramesside Art (ca. 1295-1070 B.C.) and of textual objects throughout Egyptian history. He earned his MA from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in Biblical Studies and his PhD in Egyptology from Yale University. His scholarship probes the nexus of visual studies and textual analysis by investigating how art, sign, and language interact.

Francesca Du Brock, Chief Curator, Anchorage Museum

Francesca Du Brock, Chief Curator at the Anchorage Museum, is focused on developing exhibitions that have sustainability, equity, and imagination at their core. Recent projects focus on topics of care and climate justice, Black history in Alaska, Northern feminisms, food culture, and immigration. Francesca has worked as an artist, educator, and archivist throughout the US and Mexico and brings a passion for learning from, and through the arts to her current work. She has a B.A. in Art History from Bowdoin College, a M.F.A. from the San Francisco Arts Institute, and a M.Ed. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Kimberli Gant, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Brooklyn. Museum

Kimberli Gant is the Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She has previously worked at the Chrysler Museum, the Newark Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art. She has curated exhibitions including Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence & the Mbari Club (2022-23), Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Boat People (2021), Brendan Fernandes: Bodily Forms (2020), and John Akomfrah: Tropikos (2019). Gant has published scholarly work in Anywhere But Here: Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond (2015), art publications such as NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Art Lies and African Arts, and several catalogues.

Beatriz Lobo Britto, Curator, Institute of International Visual Arts

Beatriz Lobo Britto (b. 1994, Brazil) is  the Curator at the Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva). Beatriz is also a museologist, researcher and an enthusiast of non-hierarchical thinking,believing in the equality of ideas and non-linear ways of composing and organizing them. Beatriz holds a BA (Hons) in Museum Studies from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and a MA in Curatorial Practice with a focus in Contemporary Art from Glasgow School of Art. She has also worked at The NewBridge Project (Newcastle, UK), Gallery of Modern Art (Glasgow, UK), Museu do Índio (Museum of Indigenous Peoples, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

Dr Rosalind McKever is Curator of Paintings and Drawings at the V&A, where she co-curated the exhibition Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear (2022). She specialises in modern European art, its reception in Britain and North America, and its relationship with fashion and the applied arts. Prior to joining the V&A, she worked at the National Gallery, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and she has also curated exhibitions for the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo, and taught art history at the University of Sussex.

John Kenneth Paranada, Curator of Art and Climate Change, Sainsburys Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia

J. John Kenneth Paranada is the curator of the upcoming exhibition Sediment Spirit and co-editor of Planet For Our Future. At the Sainsbury Centre he holds the prestigious position of Curator of Art and Climate Change, funded by the John Ellerman Foundation and is a researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UEA. His interdisciplinary curatorial practice focuses on experimental futures and hybrid forms, with a  particular emphasis on climate change adaptation, the Anthropocene period and new media technologies.He received his Master of Fine Arts in Curating with a focus on art in the Anthropocene at Goldsmiths College, University of London (2016), Master of Advanced Studies in Curating with a focus on Social Sculpture at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland (2015). He studied Philosophy of Nature under Bruno Latour at Science Politique Paris, France funded by Institut Francais (2013).