Virtual | Annual Leadership Series | Curator’s Choice: Alison Gass, Anni Pullagura, & Claudia Zapata

ArtTable’s Curator’s Choice program is a dynamic, Pecha Kucha-style presentation featuring three curators, each offering a unique perspective on the artists and works they believe best define the current moment in American art. During the program, each curator will have 10 minutes to present three to five works of their choosing, followed by 10 minutes of audience Q&A. The format is fast-paced, engaging, and encourages a range of viewpoints while fostering thoughtful conversation among arts professionals.

About our Speakers:

Alison Gass is ICA San Francisco’s Founding Executive Director. Her leadership in museums has reflected a sustained commitment to building globally-minded and community-engaged exhibitions programs and diversifying museums’ collections, exhibition programs, staff and visitorship. Gass was appointed the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago where she launched the Feitler Center for Academic Engagement. Previously, she was the Chief Curator at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and Assistant Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ICA SF isn’t her first “startup” museum. After leaving SFMOMA, Gass served as Founding Chief Curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, where she helped launch the new building, recruited a staff, and established a global contemporary art program. She holds degrees in Art History from Columbia University and the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU.

Anni A. Pullagura, PhD, is the Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art at the High Museum of Art, where she co-led a major reinstallation of the American galleries in 2026. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. An alum of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, she has assisted on the organization of several national and international exhibitions, monographs, and publications, and previously served on the Art of the Americas Advisory Think Tank for the Harvard Art Museums. Pullagura holds a doctorate in American Studies from Brown University. Her book manuscript, Seeing Feeling: Troubling Empathy in American Art, recasts the museum as the critical ground for engaging with the social and political dimensions of feeling and sentiment in the art encounter.

Claudia E. Zapata (they/them) earned their PhD in art history at Southern Methodist University’s RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture program. They earned their BA and MA in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Maya art of the Classic period (250-900 CE). From 2010-2014, Zapata was the curator of exhibitions and programs at the Mexic-Arte Museum. They served as curatorial assistant for Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from 2018–2022. Zapata was part of the first cohort of Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellows at UCLA, administered by the Chicano Research Center from 2022-2023. In this fellowship, they researched Chicanx and Latine/x creators in Web3. Currently, they are the Blanton Museum of Art’s first associate curator of Latino art in Austin, Texas.

About the Annual Leadership Series: This signature ArtTable program was initially launched in 2016, and since its inception, the series has fostered engaging conversations among prominent women and nonbinary professionals. It has provided a platform for these influential voices to discuss the most pressing and relevant topics within our industries.

Program Admission:

• ArtTable Members – $15
• General Admission – $25

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All program registration fees go toward event expenses and administrative costs for the organization.