Ryan Dennis
Ryan N. Dennis, Curator & Programs Director at Houston’s Project Row Houses (PRH), has been invited to participate in this year’s Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL). The CCL model encompasses mentorships with innovators and museum directors, rigorous coursework in strategic management, and professional networks for support and growth. With its graduates now at the helm of major art institutions, CCL is helping to build the next generation of museum leaders, ones who combine traditional curatorial connoisseurship and art historical scholarship with administrative, managerial, and strategic expertise. In other words, they have built a program to help to bridge the gap of choosing between the business model and the curatorial model by teaching management skills to curators.
Dennis’ work focuses on African American contemporary art with a particular emphasis on socially engaged practices, site-specific projects, and public interventions. Since joining Project Row Houses in 2012, she has organized and co-organized ten Rounds of PRH group exhibitions with local, national, and international artists. Her writings have appeared in catalogs and journals, including Prospect.3 Notes for Now (2014), Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Studio magazine. She has most recently edited Collective Creative Actions: Project Row Houses at 25 and contributed to the first monograph of artist Autumn Knight titled, In Rehearsal: Autumn Knight. Dennis has been a visiting lecturer and critic at a number of art schools and art institutions throughout the country and has taught courses on community-based practices and contemporary art at the University of Houston.
CCL has chosen twelve curators for participation in the 2019 class of its annual Fellowship following the organization’s most competitive review process to date. Many Texans have been selected for participation and Ryan Dennis is an excellent choice. If you see her around, give her a big congratulations.
