Melva Jane Bucksbaum was an American art collector, curator, and patron of the arts.

Raymond J. Learsy is the author of several books, the most recent, Ruminations on the Distortion of Oil Prices and Crony Capitalism, is now available at Amazon.com. A graduate of the Wharton School, he made his life in the fast-paced, risk-filled world of commodities trading, beginning in 1959.

In 1963, he started his own firm and over twenty years expanded from the U.S. into Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia, trading in an array of bulk raw materials and commodities, shipping to customers worldwide. In the 1980s, he became a private investor, and from 1982 to 1988, served as a Reagan appointee to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Learsy’s analysis of the international oil trade, OPEC, and its impact on the American and world economies has been featured in the National Review Online, the New York Times, the Pipeline and Gas Journal, CNBC, and he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

Naomi Beckwith is the Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and focuses on conceptual practices in contemporary art. Prior to joining the MCA, Beckwith was in a project coordinator for BAMart at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania and, most immediately, Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her master’s thesis on Adrian Piper and Carrie Mae Weems earned Distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. 

Beckwith has curated and co-curated several exhibitions in Chicago, Bermuda, at the ICA in Philadelphia and in New York at Cuchifritos, Artists Space, and at the Studio Museum where she also managed the Artists-in-Residence program.  Her exhibitions and work have been featured in The New York Times, Artforum International, T Magazine, Chicago Magazine and Ebony Magazine where she was recently listed as a Top 100 Leader in Arts and Letters. 

Beckwith’s essays have appeared in dozens of art catalogues and articles in journals such as Frieze, Artforum International and Flash Art; she recently co-edited a special edition of Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art dedicated to black art collectives.  She has given numerous talks and lectures internationally and conducted seminar courses at the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. In addition to writing and making exhibitions, Beckwith sits on the Chicago Park District Arts Committee and is a trustee of The Laundromat Project in New York. Beckwith has been a grantee of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and is honored and humbled in equal measure to be recognized by ArtTable.