This year SGCI is putting a new twist on the Open Portfolio! We’re transforming it into a live, malleable “happening” where exhibitions will be culled from the work shown by Open Portfolio participants and featured at the conference as the 2020 Open Portfolio Exhibitions. The Open Portfolio, which will be held on Thursday morning this year, will provide content for the conference and the curated Open Portfolio Exhibitions will highlight members’ work and focus upon the ideas evidenced in the moment at our annual gathering.

There will be three curatorial teams travelling throughout the Open Portfolio, seeking works for their exhibitions, which will open on Saturday evening as a part of our closing festivities. The lead curators of the three teams will include one Puerto Rican Curator (external-to-SGCI), one Open Call Curator (external-to-SGCI), and one SGCI Student Curator. We are pleased to announce that the curators of the 2020 Open Portfolios are:

Laura Bravo López: Puerto Rican Curator

Laura Bravo López is Professor in the Art History Program at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Former chair of the Art History Program (2012-2016), Dr. Bravo has a Ph.D. in Art History from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and has been a researcher at the Tate Britain, the MoMA in New York, and La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. She has presented her research in more than fifty conferences, panels and symposia in Europe, North America and the Caribbean. She is the author of Ficciones certificadas: Invención y apariencia en la creación fotográfica 1975-2000 [Certified Fictions: Invention and Appearance in Photography: 1975-2000], and coauthor of more than fifteen books on art history and visual culture. She is the founder and editor of the online art journal Visión Doble, and she has curated more than twenty exhibitions and art projects in Puerto Rico and Spain, the latest: Ida y Vuelta: Experiencias de la migración en el arte puertorriqueño contemporáneo (Museum of History, Anthropology and Art, in the UPR, 2017-2018). Bravo has been coeditor of special issues of Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CUNY, 2016) and Art and Politics of Identity (Universidad de Murcia, 2018).

Hugo Ivan Juarez: SGCI Student Curator

Hugo Ivan Juarez was born and raised in the great city of Dallas, TX. He is extremely thankful for the decision his parents made to emigrate from Mexico because it allowed him to be a part of two cultures. Hugo has experienced communities built around travel, agriculture, and education but has never felt more at home than with printmakers. Hugo is currently in the process of selecting a graduate school for an MFA after a decade of studying at various printmaking programs across Texas. He is a member of the artist crew YTA in which he hosts round table discussions and curates pop-up exhibitions.

Gretchen L. Wagner: Open Call Curator

Gretchen L. Wagner is a scholar and curator specializing in the research and exhibition of modern and contemporary art, with emphasis on the history of prints and artists’ editions. She is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Saint Louis Art Museum. At the museum, she organized the exhibitions Printing Abstraction, Sun Xun: Time Spy (co-curator), Graphic Revolution: American Prints 1960 to Now (co-curator), The Shape of Abstraction: Selections from the Ollie Collection (co-curator), and the upcoming exhibition Buzz Spector: Alterations (co-curator).
 
Beginning in 2004, Wagner was a member of the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art and served most recently as the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Assistant Curator until 2012. There, she worked extensively with the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection and organized the exhibition Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions, 1962-1978. Additional exhibitions she produced at MoMA include Projects 98: Slavs and Tatars and Gabriel Orozco: Samurai Tree Invariants, and her writing appears in the publications Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art and Dada in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art.
 
Wagner has also completed projects at numerous other institutions including the exhibitions Artist’s Artists: James Siena, Josh Smith, and Charline von Heyl Collect Prints at the International Print Center New York, David Scanavino: Candy Crush and Art of Its Own Making at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and contributed to the publication German Expressionist Prints: The Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum (Hudson Hills Press). Since 2014, she has served as adjunct faculty in the Department of Art, Design, and Art History at Webster University. She received her M.A. in Art History from Williams College and her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.