Studio Museum in Harlem Inaugurates Tsige Tafesse as an Arts Leader!
Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem announced on April 2, 2024 the inauguration of the Museum’s Arts Leadership Praxis. The 2024 class reflects practitioners based in New York who’ve been nominated as the next generation of art world leaders and visionaries.
This is an annual program that provides professional development and cohort-building opportunities to mid-career cultural professionals of color with the long-term goal of redressing inequities in arts institutions.
The Arts Leadership Praxis is an unparalleled, Museum-initiated program explicitly conceived to support arts leaders with approximately five to seven years of experience in curatorial, education, or public programming positions. Drawing from the Museum’s mission as the nexus for artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally, the program continues the institution’s long-standing role in cultivating the leaders and visionaries of tomorrow. Within the Arts Leadership Praxis program, we are excited to announce the inauguration of our very own Program Manager, Tsige Tafesse, as part of the program’s cohort. Congratulations, Tsige!
Thelma Golden said, “The Studio Museum has long been committed to identifying and fulfilling educational and programmatic needs across the arts. In fact, this has been a driving undertaking for the Museum throughout its fifty-five-year history. Today we continue this legacy of changemaking by inaugurating the Arts Leadership Praxis and its class of eight outstanding participants. We do so in light of surveys conducted by both the Mellon Foundation and Museums Moving Forward, which found that too few people in leadership positions across the nation identify as people of color. I am especially thrilled to welcome this program on the heels of CCL/Studio Museum in Harlem Curators’ Forum, a collaboration between myself and Elizabeth L. Easton, the Director of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, that took place between 2021 and 2023.” The selection of the inaugural eight New York-based participants occurred through nomination by experts in the field.
The initial meeting of the 2024 Arts Leadership Praxis was held in late January. Since then, the cohort has had the opportunity to experience a handful of programs that include: focused conversations with leading arts leadership; a group trip to Los Angeles for exploring various models and networks of arts organizations as well as studio visits with notable artists; and in-person, intensive three-day workshops every month. The cohort will continue to receive individual mentorship, professional development workshops, and seminars.
Thank you to our Program Manager, Tsige Tafesse, who has been stewarding our fellowship and public programs, for your brilliance and leadership in the field. The Arts Leadership Praxis program is funded in part by the Ford Foundation.
