Louis Chude-Sokei is Professor of English, and the Wein Chair of African-American and Black Diaspora Studies at Boston University. Books include the award-winning, The Last Darky: Bert Williams, Black on Black Minstrelsy and the African Diaspora, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics and the acclaimed memoir, Floating in A Most Peculiar Way. Also, the Korean translation of Dr. Satan’s Echo Chamber: Reggae, Technology and the Diaspora Process and the German collection, Race und Technologie: Essays der Migration. Founder of the sonic art/archiving project, Echolocution, he’s collaborated with artists including Mouse on Mars, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Marina Rosenfeld and Mendi&Keith Obadike. He was a curator of Carnegie Hall’s 2022 Afrofuturism Festival and currently advises the Guggenheim’s Art and Technology Initiative. At the 2024 Venice Biennale, he contributed a sound installation for the German National Pavilion. In 2025 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction.
Meghan Clare Considine
Curatorial assistant | Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
Ally Schmaling
Meghan Clare Considine is curatorial assistant at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, where she is contributing to exhibitions and publications with Portia Zvavahera, Boston's African American Master Artists-in-Residence Program, Lucy Raven, and Cynthia Daignault, among others. Previously, she held positions at MASS MoCA and the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is interested in questions around performance and embodiment, legibility, and relationships between artistic practices and solidarity movements. She earned an MA from the Williams College and Clark Art Institute Graduate Program in the History of Art in 2023. In September 2025 she participated in the 13th Berlin Biennale's Curators Workshop Fugitive Acts: Art and Politics.
Rainer Hauswirth
Director and Curator | Goethe-Institut Boston
Goethe-Institut
Rainer Hauswirth is director of the Goethe-Institut Boston since August 2025, having previously worked for the Goethe-Instituts in Rome, Tel Aviv, Porto, Stockholm and Abidjan. He co-curated the exhibitions “Motor Show” (Ingo Vetter at Goethe-Institut Sweden, 2011), “The Alien Within – A living laboratory of Western Society“ (Christoph Schlingensief and Tania Bruguera; Malmö Konsthall 2014) and “ABJ” (Emeka Ogboh at Art space SOMETHING, Abidjan 2024).
Rainer was director of the visual arts department at the Goethe-Institut headquarters in Munich from 2015 to 2019. During this time, he was involved in several projects and conferences on the topics of restitution, the future of museums and colonial heritage, including the international research and exhibition project “Bauhaus Imaginista” (2017–2019), which took place on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus. He was a member of the steering committee for the pan-African project “MuseumFutures – Africa” (2020–2023).
2024 Jury Members
Ashleigh Gordon
Co-founder, Artistic Director and Violist | Castle of our Skins
Photo: Roberto Torres Photography
Described as a “charismatic and captivating performer,” Ashleigh Gordon has recorded with Switzerland's Ensemble Proton and Germany's Ensemble Modern; performed with Grammy-award winning BMOP and Grammy-nominated A Far Cry string ensemble; appeared at the prestigious BBC Proms Festival with the Chineke! Orchestra and at Carnegie Hall with the Gateways Music Festival among numerous ensembles. Comfortable on an international stage, she has performed in such venues as the Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls (London), Konzerthaus Berlin and Oper Frankfurt (Germany), Gare du Nord and Dampfzentrale Bern (Switzerland), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Lee Hysan Concert Hall (Hong Kong)
Ashleigh is co-founder, Artistic Director and violist of Castle of our Skins, a Boston-based concert and educational series devoted to celebrating Black Artistry through music. In recognition of her work, she has been featured in the Boston Globe and NYTimes, and awarded the 2016 Charles Walton Diversity Advocate Award from the American Federation of Musicians. She is a 2019 Brother Thomas Fellow, a nominee for the 2020 "Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities,” and named one of WBUR’s “ARTery 25”, twenty-five millennials of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene.
Peter Murphy
Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow | Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Harvard Art Museums
Peter Murphy is the Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Harvard Art Museums. He is co-curator with Lynette Roth of Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation (Fall 2024) and curator of Katharina Sieverding: Transformer (Fall 2024). With Lynette Roth and Elizabeth Rudy, he is co-curator of Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking (Spring 2024). His current curatorial research examines the relationship between housing crises and disability in modern and contemporary art.
Lauren O’Neal is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator who has exhibited and performed at Portland Museum of Art, Purdue University, the Theater Academy of Finland, and Harvard University. O’Neal has been a recipient of residencies and grants from the Vermont Studio Center, the Somerville Arts Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the LEF Foundation. O’Neal current teaches at Boston University, was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and served as the director and curator of the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy. O’Neal received an MFA from Maine College of Art and Design. O’Neal’s doctorate from the University of the Arts Helsinki explores the intersection of choreographic thinking and curatorial practice.
2023 Jury Members
Yvette Janine Jackson
Assistant Professor | Harvard University, Department of Music
Recent reviews have praised Mr Vargas for his “highly emotional and thoughtful” playing and his “striking energy and uncompromising honesty”. Highlights of the upcoming 2023 season include a series of recitals in New England and California featuring music of what is to be his debut album titled “Souvenirs” as well as his debut with the National Symphony of Ecuador performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in honor of the composer’s 150th birth anniversary.
Besides his concertizing, Mr. Vargas is involved in several exciting projects that demonstrate the wide spectrum of his musical interests: The Roxbury Piano Program, Festival Esmeraldas and Roxbury Concert Series.
