The first comprehensive article on African American artist and educator Mildred Thompson, “Mildred Thompson: Making the Invisible Visible” will focus on her experiences, influences, and practice, reintroducing Thompson’s work to the broader community and situating her within the context of modern and contemporary art. It will also draw on research into Thompson’s time spent in Washington, D.C., New York, Paris, Hamburg and Düren, Germany.
As senior curator at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Melissa Messina has curated solo exhibitions for such artists as Alexandre Arrechea, Chakaia Booker, Nick Cave, Wayne Gonzales, Whitfield Lovell, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Youssef Nabil, Clare Rojas, Shinique Smith, and Alison Elizabeth Taylor, as well as the photography exhibition Room In My Head: Staging Psychological Spaces and the group exhibition The Spirituality of Place. Messina has also curated solo exhibitions of work by Uta Barth, Lynda Benglis, Ingrid Calame, Alex Prager, and Ursula Von Rydingsvard. Prior to her time at SCAD, Messina was the national program director for ArtTable, where she developed the public programs for Prospect. 1 New Orleans biennial. She was also a guest curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.