Thelma Golden and Glenn Lowry with Helen Lee and Joachim Pissarro

Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual art by artists of African descent. Golden began her career as a Studio Museum intern in 1987. In 1988, she joined the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she launched her influential curatorial practice. Over a decade at the Whitney, she organized numerous groundbreaking exhibitions, including Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in American Art. She became Director of the The Studio Museum in 2005. Under her leadership, the Studio Museum has gained increased renown as a global leader in the exhibition of contemporary art, a center for innovative education, and a cultural anchor in the Harlem community.

Glenn D. Lowry became the sixth director of The Museum of Modern Art in 1995. Leading a staff of over 750, Mr. Lowry continues the Museum’s legacy of enriching public life through exhibitions, educational programs, publications, and digital tools that challenge conventional ideas about modern and contemporary art and design, and initiatives that bring MoMA’s renowned collection and research to audiences worldwide. Mr. Lowry lectures and writes in support of contemporary art, on the role of museums in society, and on other topics related to his research interests. He also serves on the advisory council of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. In 2004, the French government honored Mr. Lowry with the title of Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Helen Lee has had many roles in the art world, including collector, academic, art advisor, art book editor, and auction house specialist. She has worked at Christie’s, Harry N. Abrams Publishing, the Robert Miller Gallery, and for James Wolfensohn, among others. Her passion for the arts derives from her belief that art and culture provide vital means of communication across cultural and political divides. Helen is an advisor to the Milken Institute for its art and culture programming. She is the Chairman of the American Foundation for the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she completed her post-graduate studies after earning a BA from Harvard. Helen is also a board member of the Rail.

Joachim Pissarro is the Bershad Professor of Art History and Director of the Hunter College Galleries, Hunter College, CUNY/City University of New York. He was a Curator at MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture. His recent curatorial projects include Alberto Giacometti | Yves Klein: In Search of the Absolute at Gagosian Gallery London (2016); Pissarro à Eragny at the Musée du Luxembourg (2017); Olga Picasso, Musée National Picasso, Paris (2017), Museo Picasso, Málaga (2019), and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (2019). His latest book Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained (2018, Penn State University Press) is co-authored with David Carrier, following Wild Art (Phaidon, 2016). Joachim is also a Consulting Editor of the Brooklyn Rail.