Allison Carey is a Master’s candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, focusing on  modern and contemporary art. She is broadly interested in the methods through which art and museums can illuminate repeatedly omitted historic narratives, especially in the context of movements for equality in America over the last half century. Allison previously studied art history at Dartmouth College, where she spent her senior year curating her own exhibition, “When Art Interests History,” at the college’s Hood Museum of Art. She has additionally held positions at a breadth of institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of…

Andy Cheng is a second-year M.A. student at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU with a research interest in the intersection of minimalism and queer culture. Originally from Hong Kong, he was the co-curator of a touring exhibition of prints (Providence University Art Center, Taiwan; Our Gallery, Hong Kong) and Assistant Curator of Osage Gallery. He has also held an internship in the University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, where he received his B.A. with First Class Honours in Art History and French.

Juul Van Haver is originally from Belgium and is currently a Master’s student at the Institute of Fine Arts with a focus on modern and contemporary art. He is interested in critical theory, aesthetics, curatorial practice and experimental film and video with a special passion for the emergence of new media in the 50s and 60s. Juul previously studied Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies at Ghent University from which he received a MA degree in 2021. In the past, he has worked at the Vandenhove Center for Architecture and Art (Ghent) and was a co-curator for “Impressions: From the…

A first-year M.A. Candidate the Institute of Fine Arts, Elyse Howell intends to focus her studies on the Late Antique and Medieval periods. She is interested in material approaches to art history and hopes to explore the intersections of art, material culture, and religion. Elyse is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, earning two B.A. degrees in history and art and art history. While an undergraduate, she was awarded a research fellowship that enabled her to study museum exhibitions at collections in London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and New York City. Prior to enrolling at the Institute, Elyse…

Barbie Kim is an M.A candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, concentrating in East Asian art. Her research emphasizes the transnational art history of twentieth-century China in relationship with the ideology of “Western”.  Kim held a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Art History Thesis from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she focused in painting, sculpture, and art history. 

Sofia Maria Ohmer is a first-year M.A. candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York, focusing on modern and contemporary art. She is particularly interested in how art evokes democratic processes, and in the challenges contemporary political art faces today. Moreover, she wants to investigate how political art is made, exhibited, and perceived in non-democratic countries. Sofia earned her B.A. at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Germany, where she majored in culture, communication & management. While at Zeppelin University she held positions as a student researcher and as Executive Student Coordinator for Seelicht Medialab, the university’s media initiative. She interned at…

Grace Oller is a master’s candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts focusing on modern and contemporary American art and curatorial practice. She received her BFA in Fine Arts, the History of Art and Visual Culture, and Creative Writing from Columbus College of Art & Design in May 2020. She has curated five group exhibitions, exhibited work in seven, participated in a black smithing residency, and was a month-long curatorial resident at the Second Sight Project in Columbus, Ohio. Before coming to the IFA, Grace was an Exhibition Assistant at the Columbus Museum of Art where she helped present a…

Madi Shenk is a Master’s candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, focusing on modern and contemporary art history. Shenk’s research interests include Marxist and queer perspectives of post-war art, thing-theory and materiality, as well as female collage artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. She earned her undergraduate degree in Humanities with focuses in philosophy and art history at Washington College in May of 2019, receiving the Art History Award and the Norman James Humanities Award for Excellence. She has held positions at the Kohl Gallery in Chestertown, Maryland, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., as well as…

Eve Sperling is currently pursuing her M.A. at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, with a focus on late medieval and early modern art. She is driven to write from ecocritical perspectives and is particularly interested in how animals, and human-animal relationships, figure into artworks of the past (both in terms of iconography and material). She received her B.A. in Fine Arts from Pitzer College in Claremont, C.A., with a Minor in Art History. Before graduating from Pitzer, Eve worked as Program Intern for Fulcrum Arts in Pasadena, C.A., and helped to organize the 2019 AxS (art + science) Symposium, Free Radicals:…