Ian Gabriel Wilson
Curator | Art Historian | Arts Administrator
Blowing Rock Art & History Museum

Ian Gabriel Wilson
Curator | Art Historian | Arts Administrator
Blowing Rock Art & History Museum

Ian Gabriel Wilson is a curator, art historian, and arts administrator who has served as the Curator of Exhibitions & Collections at the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum (BRAHM) since 2021. He holds a BA in Art History and Cultural History from Marlboro College in Vermont, and dual master’s degrees in Modern & Contemporary Art History and Arts Administration & Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

Before joining BRAHM, Wilson was the Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow at Cranbrook Art Museum in Michigan, where he curated exhibitions such as Ruth Adler Schnee: Modern Designs for Living, the first major museum retrospective on the celebrated textile designer and architect. At BRAHM, he has organized over 40 exhibitions, including The Hard Edge & The Soft Line: A Retrospective of Maud Gatewood in 2024, which brought together works from private and public collections across the Southeast.

Wilson has previously held positions with the academic journal ARTMargins, the Roger Brown Study Collection in Chicago, and the Sullivan Galleries of SAIC, where he was awarded a Graduate Curatorial Fellowship by the Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice. His curatorial practice emphasizes the intersections of modern and contemporary art, design, and craft. He has contributed to numerous publications, authored exhibition catalogs, and taught courses on the history of craft and visual culture.

Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D.
Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College

OUR JUROR

Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College, New York, and a Senior Writer and Editor-at-Large at The Brooklyn Rail where he writes widely about contemporary art and museum exhibitions. He is the co-author of the monograph on Cecily Brown published by Phaidon Press, Ltd. (2020). He was curator of Ben Wilson: From Social Realism to Abstraction, at the George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, New Jersey (2017); co-curator of the exhibition River Crossings at Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historical Site, in Catskill, New York, and Olana, in Hudson, New York (2015); co-curator of Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at Tate Britain, London, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, the Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo, and the Palazzo Chiablese, Turin (2012–14); and co-curator of John Everett Millais at Tate Britain, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Fukuoka, and the Bunkamura Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2007–08). He is the author of John Everett Millais (Phaidon, 2012), and is presently completing a monograph on Shahzia Sikander for Lund Humphries Press, to be published in 2025.

Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D.
Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College

2024 Juror

Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D.
Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College

Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College, New York, and a Senior Writer and Editor-at-Large at The Brooklyn Rail where he writes widely about contemporary art and museum exhibitions. He is the co-author of the monograph on Cecily Brown published by Phaidon Press, Ltd. (2020). He was curator of Ben Wilson: From Social Realism to Abstraction, at the George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, New Jersey (2017); co-curator of the exhibition River Crossings at Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historical Site, in Catskill, New York, and Olana, in Hudson, New York (2015); co-curator of Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at Tate Britain, London, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, the Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo, and the Palazzo Chiablese, Turin (2012–14); and co-curator of John Everett Millais at Tate Britain, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Fukuoka, and the Bunkamura Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2007–08). He is the author of John Everett Millais (Phaidon, 2012), and is presently completing a monograph on Shahzia Sikander for Lund Humphries Press, to be published in 2025.

2023 Jurors

Dr. Valerie Hillings,
Director of The North Carolina Museum of Art

In November 2018, Valerie Hillings, PhD, became the 9th director and first female director of the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2019, Hillings oversaw the development of a new five-year strategic plan dedicated to the Museum’s mission of stewarding and sharing the People’s Collection across the state and highlighting multiple, diverse histories, voices, and perspectives through the campus’s unique intersection of art, nature, and people. In 2019, Hillings received a Mellon grant to initiate a three-year project to reimagine the NCMA’s collection galleries. In fall 2022, the Museum completed this project, which showcases new narratives, new acquisitions, and loans that reflect our global society and blur the often-strict borders between genres, time periods, and media.

From 2004 to 2018, Hillings held progressively senior curatorial positions for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation and worked on projects for museums in its global constellation—Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin; Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Las Vegas; and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice—and with partner institutions in Australia, Europe, and the Middle East. In 2009, Hillings joined the Guggenheim’s dedicated Abu Dhabi Project staff, and as curator and associate director of curatorial affairs, Hillings led a team that developed a strategy for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s collection of art made around the world from the 1960s to today.

Hillings received her B.A. in art history from Duke University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Dr. Paul Baker,
Executive Director at The Contemporary Art Museum

Paul Baker, PhD, serves as the Executive Director at CAM. He received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Art/African American Studies, a M.A. from North Carolina State University in Public History with a concentration in Museum Studies, and a Ph.D. from North Carolina A&T State University School of Education in Leadership Studies with a focus area on management styles for cultural institutions, museums and libraries. He completed Harvard University’s Management Development Program and Cornell University’s Certification Program in Policy Development.

Baker teaches Museum Studies and History at North Carolina A&T State University and has taught at other institutions including North Carolina Central University and Wayne State University. He has completed fellowships at Yale University, the University of Virginia and Oxford University, Oxford, England. Devoted to service, Baker is a member of the Board of Directors for Arts Greensboro. He has served on the boards of the Raleigh City Museum, South Carolina African American Heritage Commission, and the Associates Board of Directors for the North Carolina Museum of History.