CIMAM New Members - July 2026
CIMAM welcomes a new group of members to its international community. Joining from all parts of the world, they include museum directors, chief curators, collection specialists, educators, and independent curators. Their work spans collection stewardship, decolonial perspectives, community engagement, and new institutional models, reflecting the breadth of practice that shapes CIMAM's global network today.
Denny Mwaura is a curator, writer, and programmer based in Chicago, where he serves as Assistant Director and Curator of Exhibits at Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago. His work centers on social histories of Black life, disability aesthetics and access within cultural institutions, and overlooked narratives of Chicago's creative communities. He holds an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent curatorial projects include Imagination Doctors (2026) and The Mask of Prosperity (2024), and he is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Learning Together: Art Education and Community (University of Illinois Press, 2026).
Ilona Demchenko is a curator and cultural project director working with contemporary art institutions and large-scale exhibition projects in Ukraine and internationally. Since 2025, she serves as Program Director at Jam Factory Art Center in Lviv, where she shapes the institution's contemporary art program, commissions new works, and builds international collaborations around post-industrial heritage and critical artistic practices. She has held long-term project-based roles with PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv and production and curatorial-coordination roles for Ukrainian projects at the Venice Biennale. Recent projects include co-curating Structures of Reciprocity at Jam Factory (2024-2025) and contributing to Still Joy, part of the official collateral programme of La Biennale di Venezia 2026.
Nina Folkersma is an independent curator based in Amsterdam, whose career spans exhibitions, advisory, governance, and leadership roles in the Netherlands and internationally. She holds an MA in Art History and Archeology from the University of Amsterdam and trained in De Appel's Curatorial Programme. She has worked with institutions including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, where she co-curated the largest Marina Abramović retrospective ever shown in the Netherlands (2024), the Amsterdam Museum, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. From 2021 to 2023 she directed Amsterdam Art and its flagship programme Amsterdam Art Week. She is currently Interim Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Het Noordbrabants Museum, where she is developing a major exhibition on Leonora Carrington and Hieronymus Bosch (2027-2028).
Alison Hearst is Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, where she has worked for over fifteen years, rising from Curatorial Research Assistant to her current role. Her research-driven, interdisciplinary exhibitions reflect the cultural, political, and technological complexities of our time, with a curatorial practice grounded in institutional critique and an ethic of care for artworks, artists, and communities. She holds an MA in Art History from Texas Christian University. Recent projects include I'll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen (2023) and Alex Da Corte: The Whale (2025), both accompanied by publications she edited with DelMonico Books, and she is a contributing author to a forthcoming Phaidon monograph on Tom Anholt (2026).
Jessica Hong is Chief Curator at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Her career spans some of the leading museums in the United States, including the Toledo Museum of Art, where she was Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and the Harvard Art Museums. She holds an MA in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her approach is locally responsive while globally minded, connecting communities to a broader interconnected sociocultural fabric. Recent projects include The World in Kansas City (2026), Raven Halfmoon: Ride or Die (2025-2026), and the touring retrospective Marisol: A Retrospective (2024), for which she authored a catalogue essay.
Marina Reyes Franco is a curator and writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with over sixteen years of experience across contemporary art, publications, and institutional leadership in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. As Curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (2019-2025), she curated projects including Puerto Rico Negrx, co-curated with María Elena Ortiz, and Tropical Is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime. She co-founded and directed La Ene in Buenos Aires and served as Artistic Advisor for the 59th Venice Biennale. She holds an MA in Argentine and Latin American Art History and is currently Curatorial Intensive Program Manager at Independent Curators International, alongside her independent practice.
Marton Robinson is an artist, researcher, and educator, and Assistant Professor at OCAD University in Toronto. Approaching his work through a background in health, care, and recreation, his practice explores Afro-diasporic memory and decolonial methodologies, with a particular connection to Central America. He holds an MFA from the University of Southern California and a BFA in Visual Arts and Communications from the National University of Costa Rica. He is a founding board member of the Center for Research, Art, and Action for Memory (CIAAM), which operates the AMA Y NO OLVIDA Museum of Memory Against Impunity in Managua, Nicaragua, and was previously a Fractal Fellow at Eyebeam in New York. His ongoing project Vital Networks fosters dialogue between art, education, and territory across Costa Rica, Zimbabwe, and Canada.
Joselyne Contreras Cerda is an independent curator and Lecturer in the Art Department at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, with more than fifteen years of experience in curatorial projects taking a territorialized, situated, and community-based approach. She was Associate Curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago (2022-2024) and Public Programme Curator at Latin Elephant in London (2016-2023). She holds an MA and BA in Visual Arts from Universidad de Chile and is completing a PhD in Curatorial Knowledge at Goldsmiths, University of London. Recent projects include Magnitud 11.9, an exhibition by Tania Bruguera at the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (2023), and Atmósferas de Terror, presenting the collective Forensic Architecture in Chile (2023).