Our experts
JONATHAN F. WALZ, PhD
Director of Curatorial Affairs & Curator of American Art, The Columbus Museum, Georgia
Jonathan Frederick Walz, an expert on American modernism, has over 25 years of experience in art museums, including more than a decade of service at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. He has published essays and given lectures on a range of topics, from conceptual portraiture and queer rurality to artists Charles Demuth, St. EOM, and Alma W. Thomas.
SETH FEMAN, PhD
Deputy Director for Art & Interpretation and Curator of Photography, Chrysler Museum of Art
Seth Feman, is the Deputy Director for Art & Interpretation and the Curator of Photography at the Chrysler Museum of Art. His exhibitions and publications concentrate on American modernism and how qualities of affect, mobility, and vision become embedded in the built environment, the language of the media, and specific works of art.
LISA FARRINGTON, PhD
Associate Dean of Fine Arts, Howard University and Director of the Gallery of Art
Lisa Farrington is Associate Dean of Fine at Howard University where she came after teaching for 20 years at Parsons School of Design and (as Founding Chair of Art and Music) John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY. A leader in the field of African American art, she lectures worldwide and has published numerous books including the pivotal African American Art: A Visual and Cultural History Oxford University Press, 2016).
MELISSA HO
Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Melissa Ho is Curator of Twentieth-Century Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, which holds the largest public collection of Alma Thomas’s paintings on canvas. Her research and exhibitions focus on art made since 1945. She is particularly interested in studying the connections between artistic practice and social and historical conditions, as well as debates surrounding abstraction, conceptualism and experimental art. Ho is at work on an exhibition entitled Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas, which will open in 2023.
MELANEE C. HARVEY, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Art, Howard University
Melanee C. Harvey, is coordinator of Howard’s art history program and chair for the Porter Colloquium. She has published on architectural iconography in African American art, Black Arts Movement artists and ecowomanist art practices. She is currently writing her first book entitled, Patterns of Permanence: African Methodist Episcopal Architecture and Visual Culture.
AARON PAYNE
Art Dealer & Advisor; Owner, Aaron Payne Fine Art, Santa Fe
Aaron Payne is an art dealer, advisor and collector with over three decades of experience in the acquisition and sale of Modern, Postwar and Contemporary Art to private, corporate and public collections. His areas of specialty include American Modernism, the Stieglitz Circle, Postwar, Contemporary and African-American art.
TIFFANY E. BARBER, PhD
Scholar, Curator, and Critic
Tiffany E. Barber, is a scholar, curator, and critic of visual art, new media, and performance. Her work, which spans abstraction, Afrofuturism, Black feminist praxis, dance, and fashion, focuses on artists of the Black diaspora. She is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Art History at the University of Delaware.
CHARLES THOMAS LEWIS
Great Nephew
Charles Thomas Lewis is the last living member of Alma Woodsey Thomas’ immediate family. He visited with her as a young child and during the summers of 1968 to 1970 and lived with her from Easter of 1971 until 1973 and saw her until her death in 1978. She was and continues to be a major part of his life.