Thank you for joining ArtTable’s Annual Benefit & Award Ceremony honoring Linda Goode Bryant with the Distinguished Service in the Visual Arts Award and Niama Safia Sandy with the New Leadership Award. With special remarks from Valerie Cassel Oliver, Anne Delaney, and ArtTable Fellowship Alumna Sophie Bae,  the evening brought together ArtTable members and supporters dedicated to advancing the leadership of women and nonbinary leadership in the visual arts. 

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all who attended and contributed to the event’s success. We are grateful to our Benefit co-chairs Valerie Cassel Oliver, Kayla G. Coleman, Kendal Henry, Lolan Ekow Sagoe-Moses, and all of our host committee members. 

There is still time to give. You may do so here if you would like to make a fully tax-deductible contribution.

Benefit Co-Chairs

Host Committee

Mentorship Ticket Purchasers

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Linda Goode Bryant is a distinguished social activist, gallerist, and filmmaker based in New York City. Renowned for her groundbreaking initiative, Just Above Midtown (JAM), established in 1972, Bryant pioneered a commercial gallery showcasing Black artists and artists of color, emphasizing artistic freedom over financial gains. Her dedication to fostering artistic dialogue led the gallery to host exhibitions of notable figures like Janet Olivia Henry, Randy Williams, Ishmael Houston-Jones Maren Hassinger, and many more. Forty years after its founding, JAM was the subject of a 2022 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, which brought together works from the fourteen years of JAM alongside a series of performances, installations, and activations across New York City.

Bryant’s cinematic endeavors include co-directing the award-winning documentary “Flag Wars” in 2003, addressing gentrification’s impact on marginalized communities. This acclaimed work earned her a Peabody Award and subsequent Guggenheim Fellowship. Beyond film, Bryant’s commitment to community empowerment is evident in Project EATS, founded in 2008, an initiative of the Active Citizens Project, through which Goode Bryant works with a team to grow fresh produce in New York City and provide it to underserved communities in food deserts, like in the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Furthering her impact, Bryant founded the Active Citizen Project, utilizing art and media to mobilize youth in civic engagement. With accolades such as the 2020 Berresford Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a robust educational background, including an MBA from Columbia University and a BA from Spelman College in painting, Bryant’s multifaceted contributions resonate across disciplines, championing social change and artistic expression.

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Niama Safia Sandy is a New York-based cultural anthropologist, multidisciplinary artist, independent curator and exhibition-maker, organizer, and educator. Her artistic, curatorial, and pedagogical practices all hinge upon justice, activism, creating visibility, and dialogue by elucidating connections where most had not thought to make them. The lifeblood of Sandy’s work is about making art, history and ideas accessible, and collaborating with and caring for artists across many disciplines to offer audiences contemporary interventions that challenge, reconcile, or reframe those histories toward something new and more equitable for all. She is deeply invested in multidisciplinary experiences because she believes the artificial barriers created between artistic fields often put practitioners at a disadvantage. Breaking these disciplinary and hierarchical boundaries allows us to connect with the animating spirit that spurs our work forward, and to expand our thinking about how things are connected. 

Sandy is currently the Inaugural Curatorial Fellow 2024-2025 with Antenna, New Orleans. She has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, School of Art since Fall 2019 teaching Fine Arts graduate and undergraduate students. At Pratt, Niama is a recipient of the 2023 Faculty Development Fund and the 2022-23 and 2023-24 School of Art Dean’s Innovation Fund grants. Since 2021, she has also been the Manager of Grants and Education Programs for the Black Artists + Designers Guild (BADG). Thus far in her role, Niama has delivered over $50,000 of funding directly to artists. Sandy also served as Consulting Producer for New York Winter Jazz Fest 2021, the Inaugural Curator-and-Writer-in-Residence at Fridman Gallery (2021), and Performance Curator at TEDWomen 2021. She has served on panels and in advisory capacities for Artadia, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Bemis Center, Chamber Music America, En Foco, and many other national arts organizations.

Niama has mounted exhibitions across the United States and internationally, including Black Magic: AfroPasts/AfroFutures (2016 and 2017), Refraction: New Photography of Africa and its Diaspora (2018), In Plain Sight/Site (2018). Niama has presented, co-convened, and participated in programs at Creative Time, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, MICA, the World Around Summit, Harvard University, National Sawdust, Oberlin College, The Public Theater, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, 1014 & more. Sandy has utilized her exhibition and programmatic work as a healing and generative space, a portal for transmutation to activating inquiry and reflection into our relationships with beauty, history, creativity, power, and life itself. No matter the disciplinary intersections her work crosses, she sifts through the remnants of history in the hope of lifting us all to a higher state of historical, ontological, and spiritual wholeness in the process. In recent years this has extended to the creation of new initiatives and programs.

Among Niama’s collaborative initiatives are The Blacksmiths, a national coalition of artists, presenters, and producers across disciplines specifically dedicated to transforming the way Black art professionals are stewarded into the space founded in 2020. In 2022, Sandy co-founded THIS IS A MOVEMENT, an initiative seeking to create a more equitable, non-hierarchical, collaborative, and imaginative music industry through an intersectional Black feminist lens. She is also a member of the artist collectives the Resistance Revival Chorus and the Wide Awakes.

She has completed commissioned writing on artists including Milford Graves, Dindga McCannon, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Nate Lewis, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Rachel Stern, Brittany Leeanne Williams, and many others. Sandy and her work have been featured in The New York Times, Monopol, Teen Vogue, The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Camera Austria, OkayAfrica, CultureType, and other publications. Her writing has been featured in Artsy, Active Cultures LA, NATAAL, and more.

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Soohyun (Sophie) Bae, born and raised in South Korea, developed a profound passion for creativity and visual art from an early age. This passion has led her to create visually appealing content that resonates with diverse audiences. She is Assistant Art Registrar, Collection Manager, and Exhibition Manager at George Mason University. Additionally, Bae is responsible for organizing and coordinating a printed catalog showcasing a carefully curated selection of pieces from the Capital One Center art collection.

Bae is an ArtTable Fellowship Alumna who worked closely with the Capital One Art Program. This opportunity provided her with invaluable experience in developing a discerning eye for art curation and honing her research skills. The successful completion of this project provides Sophie with a solid foundation for her future endeavors and contributes to the promotion and enrichment of the Capital One Center’s permanent art collection.

She volunteered her skills in marketing and communications at ArtTable in Washington DC and works as a contractor with Art in Embassies: U.S. Department of State, further expanding her involvement in the art world. Sophie is an accomplished and creativity-oriented visual director, showcasing expertise in photography, videography, graphic design, digital asset management, exhibition management, and arts management.

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Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where worked from 2000 – 2017. She has served as director of the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995-2000) and a program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-1995). In 2000 she was one of six curators selected to organize the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art. During her tenure at the CAMH, Cassel Oliver organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Cinema Remixed & Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970 with Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee (2009); a major retrospective on Benjamin Patterson, Born in the State of Flux/us (2010) and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012). She has also mounted significant survey exhibitions for Benjamin Patterson, Donald Moffett, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jennie C. Jones, Angel Otero and Annabeth Rosen. 

Her 2018 debut exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was a 50-year survey of work by Howardena Pindell entitled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen. The exhibition co-organized with Naomi Beckwith, the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, was named one of the most influential of the decade. Most recently, Cassel Oliver organized the exhibition, Cosmologies from the Tree of Life that featured over thirty newly acquired works from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. She is currently developing the group exhibition, The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse, scheduled to open at the VMFA May, 2021. Cassel Oliver is the recipient of a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship (2007); the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Award (2011); the Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg Foundation-to-Life Fellowship at Hunter College (2016) and the James A. Porter Book Award from Howard University (2018). From 2016-17, she was a Senior Fellow in Curatorial Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. Cassel Oliver holds a M.A. in art history from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and, B.S. in communications from the University of Texas at Austin.

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Anne Delaney is a visual artist and a leader in feminist philanthropy. Anne began grantmaking by founding the Starry Night Fund in 2002 and then deepened this commitment by co-creating Lambent Foundation in 2008. As co-founder of Lambent Foundation, she is committed to honoring the role of artists in public life, and how cultural expression catalyzes social movements for progressive change.

Anne is a proud member of New York’s Bowery Gallery collective. She uses drawing and painting to make sense of socio-political issues in the current climate. Many national organizations have recognized Anne’s vision for philanthropy and support of women’s empowerment, including the Ms. Foundation, the New York Women’s Foundation, the Korean American Family Service Center, and the Women’s Funding Network. Anne served as a board member for Peace is Loud, the Ms. Foundation, and as an Advisory Council member of Common Justice. For 20 years, she has also served as a board member of the New York Women’s Foundation.

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ArtTable’s Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts Award

“EYE” by Louise Bourgeois, is cast each year through ArtTable as a symbol of the dedication of our Distinguished Service Awardee”

ArtTable’s Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts Award acknowledges and celebrates remarkable leadership in the arts. Its recipients exemplify ArtTable’s dedication to the lasting impact of the visual arts on our shared cultural life. In 2003, as a special gesture to ArtTable and the leading women it honors, Louise Bourgeois created an unnumbered, cast bronze edition to represent the award for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts. EYE (cast bronze and silver nitrate with a polished patina) is cast each year in commendation to our awardee.

Past awardees include Linda Goode Bryant, Shirley Pooler Kinsey, Carol Cole Levin, Barbara Tober, Susan Unterberg, Estrellita Brodsky, Marian Goodman, Lowery Stokes Sims, Marieluise Hessel-Artzt, Melva Bucksbaum & Raymond Learsy, Marguerite Steed Hoffman, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Patricia E. Harris, Lila Harnett, Yoko Ono, Toby Devan Lewis, Vishakha N. Desai, Emily K. Rafferty, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Elizabeth C. Baker, Linda Nochlin, Iris Cantor, Paula Cooper, Marcia Tucker, Lucy Lippard, Joan Mondale, Stephanie French, Dianne H. Pilgrim, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Agnes Gund, Kitty Carlisle Hart.

ArtTable’s New Leadership Award

Maya Lin’s Seven Square Inches of Water (2014) is awarded to each recipient of ArtTable’s New Leadership Award.

ArtTable’s New Leadership Award recognizes an emerging professional who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and made considerable contributions to the visual art field in the earlier stages of their careers. This award was first introduced as part of ArtTable’s 25th anniversary celebration in 2005. This past year’s award was Seven Square Inches of Water, a limited-edition artwork by Maya Lin created to benefit the “What Is Missing?” project.

Past awardees include Niama, Safia Sandy, Storm Ascher, Deana Haggag, Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood, La Tanya S. Autry, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Erin Christovale, Lauren Haynes, Jami Powell, Alexandra Chang, Naima J. Keith, Lauren Cornell, Sara Raza, Naomi Beckwith, Amy Sadao, Sarah Douglas, Cecilia Alemani, Shamim Momin, Christine Y. Kim, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Andrea Barnwell, Melissa Chiu, Fairfax Dorn and Virginia Lebermann, Ellen Haddigan, Bronwyn Keenan, Sheri L. Pasquarella, Maura Reilly, Natasha Schlesinger, Laura Hoptman, Marysol Nieves, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, and Olga Viso.