Exhibit: The World of Art
QC Alumnae discuss how to achieve a
successful career in arts
Georgia De Havenon, '93, is a Research Associate in Art of the Americas Department of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Georgia de Havenon earned her MLS from Queens College in 1993, and went on to work as a cataloger at the Art Reference Library of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Since 1996 she has been a research associate in the museum’s Department of the Art of the Americas, where she deals mainly with pre-Columbian textiles. In 1999 she received an MA from Columbia University, where she studied in the Art History and Archaeology Department. From 1968 to 1983, she worked at the Graham Gallery in New York City, where she specialized in illustrations and comic art.
Mrs. de Havenon serves as a trustee of the Foundation for the Research and Conservation of Andean Monuments, which funds archaeological and restoration projects in Peru and Bolivia. She has given papers all over the world on a variety of subjects and, with Patrick McDonnell (creator of the comic strip Mutts) and Karen O’Connell, is coauthor of Krazy Kat: The Art of George Herriman. She has curated several exhibitions, including Natural and Supernatural: Andean Textiles and Material Culture, at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. Her collecting interests include pre-Columbian textiles and works by the Transcendental Painting Group.
Susan Sills, '62, is an Artist and Member of Board of Advisors in the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Susan Steinberg Sills grew up in Jamaica, Queens, attended Jamaica High School, and graduated from Queens College with a degree in art education. She also attended the Boston Museum School, the Art Students League, and the Brooklyn Museum School. From 1965 to 1967 she taught art at the Ghana International School in Accra. In 1978 she joined Viridian Artists Gallery, an artist-owned gallery where she served as president for twenty years and continues to be a member.
Sills considers herself a figurative artist, and her main body of work consists of life-sized, painted wood cutouts of personages taken from Old Master paintings that are often arranged in whimsical installations and a 21st-century context. Her work is widely exhibited, including in twenty solo shows and many group exhibitions; her solo shows include exhibitions at the Queens College Art Center and the Pensacola Museum Art. She is included in the Sylvia Sleigh Collection of Women Artists at Rowan University
and she is a featured artist in 100 New York Painters by Cynthia Dantzic.
She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where she is a docent and member of the Board of Advisors to the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Lowery Stokes Sims, '70, is Curator Emerita in the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Lowery Stokes Sims is a specialist in modern and contemporary art, craft, and design. She is known for her interest in a diverse and inclusive global art world as well as her support of artists whose identities and work reflect those values. She holds a BA in art history from Queens College, MA in art history from Johns Hopkins University, and MPhil and PhD in art history from the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
Sims retired as curator emerita from the Museum of Arts and Design, New York in 2015, where she was the Charles Bronfman International Curator and the William and Mildred Ladson Chief Curator. She was on the education and curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1972–1999). She also served as executive director, president, and adjunct curator for the permanent collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2000–2007).
She has recently served as a guest curator and consultant for exhibitions at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, the McNay Art Museum, Grounds for Sculpture, the Craft Museum, Los Angeles, and the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco. She is working on a 2019 retrospective of Robert Colescott at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati.
Sims has lectured and guest curated exhibitions nationally and internationally. She has been a visiting professor at Queens and Hunter Colleges, and has been a fellow at the Clark Art Institute, a visiting scholar in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, and distinguished professor in the Claire Trevor School of Arts, University of California, Irvine. She was the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts for the spring 2018 semester and is currently adjunct professor for the spring 2019 semester. Sims also served on the selection jury for the World Trade Center memorial (2003–2004) and is a founding board member of ArtTable, Inc.