States of Becoming: Curatorial Discussion

Jessica Bell Brown is the Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Prior to the BMA she was the Consulting Curator at Gracie Mansion Conservancy in New York, and also held roles at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Creative Time. She is curator of the touring exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, co-organized with the Mississippi Museum of Art.

Rhea Beckett is an artist, curator, and arts administrator with an extensive performing and visual arts background. She co-founded the Black Artist Research Space (BARS), a Baltimore-based creative collective and incubator. Beckett has served as a Legislative Affairs and Grants Specialist at the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, where she played an integral role in supporting the creative community of Washington, D.C., through policy and grant-making. She has served as Registrar of the Howard University art collection and gallery manager of C. Grimaldis Gallery (Baltimore, MD). Rhea earned her BS in Art from Fisk University, where she sang soprano in the Grammy Award-winning Fisk Jubilee Singers. Rhea received her MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Rhea Beckett is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.