ABOUT THE PROJECT TEAM

Alexandra Drexelius is the Executive Assistant for Leadership Support at the Smart Museum of Art. She received her BA in Art History from the University of Chicago in 2018, focusing on public art and shifting receptions of figurative sculpture in the twentieth century. As a student, she assisted programming around the campus collection such as Concrete Happenings and Dialogo: Virginio Ferrari and Chicago. Since graduating, Drexelius has supported the development and implementation of projects at the intersection of art, architecture, and design at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. She has served as Project Manager for the Holzer commission since Spring 2020. 

Leigh Fagin is Senior Director of Programming and Engagement at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, where she develops collaborative arts projects, often in partnership with colleagues and institutions across campus and the city at large. Over the last ten years, Fagin helped organize a wide range of multidisciplinary projects including the “CineVardaExpo,” the “Envisioning China” festival, “What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights?” and the Logan Center Bluesfest. Fagin also leads the Logan: On Display program, presenting exhibitions including “Chicago Jazz & Blues: A Photographer’s View;” “Spirit of Africa”, and “Memories Museum.” Before coming to the Logan Center, Fagin worked at MASS MoCA, The Kitchen, Lucky Plush Productions, Young Audiences/NY, and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. She holds a Master’s in art education from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Art History from Wellesley College. 

Christine Mehring is Mary L. Block Professor in the Department of Art History and the College at the University of Chicago and Adjunct Curator at the Smart Museum. Her interests include public art and relations between art, design, and architecture, as well as the intersections between old and new media. Mehring recently directed “Material Matters,” which included research, material investigation, conservation, and campus siting of Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell’s colossal public sculpture Concrete Traffic (1970), along with related exhibitions and programming. Working with two seminars on public sculpture, she spearheaded the University’s website on its campus art. Her essay on the relations between Donald Judd’s art and design is in the catalogue of the Museum of Modern Art’s ongoing retrospective of the artist. Mehring is completing an edited volume, with Lisa Zaher, concerning Vostell’s use of concrete, and a book, with architectural historian Sean Keller, on the art and architecture of the Munich Olympics.

Jill Sterrett, Former Interim Director & Deputy Director, Museum Affairs and Strategic Impact, Smart Museum of Art , has focused her work on the role of museums in contemporary society and she works at the intersection of contemporary art practice, materials, conservation and collections. Sterrett is versed in artists from the 1950s to the present, in particular artists such as Eva Hesse, Robert Rauschenberg, Doris Salcedo. She is engaged in ways to revitalize museums for our times and has played an active role in the formation of Voices in Contemporary Art, an international consortium of conservators, curators, collectors, educators, and students who recognize the need for new forms of collaboration. Sterrett has held leadership roles at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. She is now an independent arts advisor on national and international projects, including for Toward Common Cause: Art Social Practice and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, a Smart Museum project opening in July 2021 across the city of Chicago.

STUDENT TEAM MEMBERS

Emeline Boehringer is an undergraduate student in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago focusing on Contemporary Art. Part of the Holzer team since Fall 2019, Emeline has worked as a Metcalf Intern and Undergraduate Research Fellow on the development of Core text selections that appear in the AR app and truck animations. She managed the development, submission, and editing of quotes from over 50 texts taught in the Core by students and faculty throughout Winter 2019 and Spring 2020. Throughout the text selection process, Emeline met with various University faculty members to conduct in-depth research on the history, pedagogy, and contemporary significance of the Core. She also conducted research regarding translation, copyright, and bibliography with the help of University experts. She also contributed to the team’s research into Jenny Holzer’s past work and Chicago exhibition history.

Maggie Borowitz is a PhD candidate in Art History and interested in the relationship between art and politics in late twentieth-century Latin America. Her dissertation project, “Caught by Surprise: Intimacy and Feminist Politics in the work of Magali Lara,” considers alternative forms of political art in 1970s and 80s Mexico City. This fall, she is teaching an undergraduate course on Art and Feminism. Maggie received a BA in anthropology from the University of Chicago (2013) and spent a couple of years working in art museum education and programming before returning to the University. As a UChicago GRAD Intern, Maggie works on curriculum development about YOU BE MY ALLY for Core classes.

Bridgette Davis is a PhD Candidate and Institute of Educational Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, where she studies the ways in which young people with multiple marginalized identities experience institutional inequality during the transition to adulthood. Davis' prior work as a multicultural literature teacher, instructional coach, and dean in Atlanta and Chicago inform her approach to the development of the K-12 curriculum for YOU BE MY ALLY. As a UChicago GRAD Intern, Davis is especially excited for the opportunity to make Holzer’s art as well as powerful texts from UChicago’s Core Curriculum available and appealing to the audiences least likely to otherwise access them.

Julia Fischer is a fourth-year undergraduate studying Political Science at the University of Chicago. Her work on the Holzer project as a Spring 2020 Metcalf Intern focused on identifying political organizations on campus that Holzer could partner with for her art installations. Julia enjoyed working on the project given the artist’s combination of creativity with civic engagement. Holzer’s art could not have come at a more important time, given the recent events in the country and the upcoming presidential election.

Heather Glenny is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at UChicago. She received her BA in Art History with an Honors in Education from Stanford University in 2016. In 2018, she received an MA in Art & Museum Studies from Georgetown, focusing on Museum Education and Inclusion. While in DC, she worked on education and curatorial teams at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and National Air and Space Museum. She has K-12 and university teaching experience in California and Vietnam, and most recently taught 10th and 11th grade IB English on Cape Cod, MA, where she was born and raised. Her current research broadly orbits the relationship between material culture and narrative, with an interest in social and material modes of learning. As a UChicago GRAD Intern, Heather works on curriculum development about YOU BE MY ALLY for Core classes.

Anna Aguiar Kosicki is a recent graduate from the University of Chicago with a BA in Sociology and Gender/Sexuality Studies. Anna was the most recent Decisions Chair of the Emergency Fund, which gives grants to marginalized students in need. They have also worked in research roles for a variety of nonprofits, including Chicago United for Equity, Chicago Innovation, and the National Public Housing Museum. As a Spring 2019 Metcalf Intern, Anna contributed political research to the Holzer project.

Zahra Nasser is a fourth-year in the College studying Art History and Philosophy, and joined the Holzer team in June as a Metcalf Intern. Zahra conducted research on Jenny Holzer, especially on her time as a UChicago student, drafting biographies of her instructors and gathering descriptions of the courses she took from College catalogue archives in Special Collections. Additionally, Zahra tested the AR app on campus, collected data on all Core texts currently taught, and compared them to the texts featured in the project. In addition, she worked to develop programs related to the project and gathered recorded readings of excerpts of the project's texts (by authors and scholars of those works) which which are published on the microsite. Zahra’s role includes archiving the project and supporting curricular needs. Zahra has interned at Artforum magazine, the Du Sable Museum of African American History, and the Chicago Review.

Elizabeth Smith received her BA in Art History from the University of Chicago in 2019, where her studies focused on modern and contemporary sculpture, installation, and site-specific art. She has written on the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Danh Vo, and Richard Serra. As an intern at several public art organizations, she assisted with the commission and production of large-scale, site-specific artworks including Phil Collins’ 2018 Creative Time project, Bring Down The Walls. As an Undergraduate Research Associate in summer and fall 2019, Elizabeth worked on early content research including gun violence and freedom of expression. She currently lives and works in New York City and works as an Assistant at Andrew Kreps Gallery.

Olivia Sturman is a software engineer at Google. She recently graduated from the University of Chicago with a BS in Computer Science with a focus in mathematics and a specialization in Human Computer Interaction. As a Metcalf Intern, Olivia has worked on the app development and testing since spring 2020. Previously she has worked as a frontend engineer for the New York Times as well as a researcher for the University of Chicago’s SAND Lab. Focusing on the intersection of art and technology, her previous projects have ranged from making 3D printed ikebana (Japanese art of floral arrangement) to creating a posture corrector via gyroscopes and an Arduino.

Zsofia Valyi-Nagy is a PhD candidate in Art History, focusing on the intersections of postwar art, technology, and gender. She is working on a dissertation titled “Vera Molnar’s Programmed Abstraction: Computer Graphics and Geometric Abstract Art in Postwar Europe.” She is currently teaching an Arts core course called “New Media Art since the 19th Century.” Zsofi received a dual BA in Visual Arts and Linguistics from the University of Chicago (2013) and an MSt in English Language from the University of Oxford (2014), where her master’s dissertation traced linguistic changes in art criticism since the 1960s. She is also a practicing artist and holographer. As a UChicago GRAD Intern, Maggie works on curriculum development about YOU BE MY ALLY for Core classes.

PROJECT PARTNERS

Mark Hellar is a technology consultant for cultural institutions and the owner of Hellar Studios LLC. He specializes in innovative yet practical digital media and software-based solutions for multimedia artists and institutions that support their work, with an emphasis on developing systems for exhibition, documentation, and preservation. Hellar is currently working on new media conservation initiatives at SFMOMA, including the conservation and care of their software-based artworks. He is also the software developer for the studio of artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute, teaching on the topics of virtual reality and augmented reality. 

Holition is an award-winning creative innovation studio, creating bespoke experiences for pioneering brands. Part think tank part digital studio, Holition is a synthesis of retail experts, scientists, film-makers, artists, mathematicians, UX designers, technologists, and other curious minds, united by a digitally empathetic approach to consumer experiences. Holition’s well-versed portfolio includes augmented reality experiences for beauty brands like Charlotte Tilbury and Covergirl, holograms for fashion brands like Dunhill and jewelry giant Cartiér, projection mapping for BMW and Shiseido and data visualisations for Farfetch, Lyst and Grabble; and in addition to their consumer portfolio, Holition wouldn’t be complete without the collaborative artistic and academic partnerships with renowned global artists such as Jenny Holzer, experimental fashion collective The Unseen, or esteemed academic bodies such as University of the Arts London, Politecnico de Milano, Parsons, and Brown University. Holition’s end-to-end technology solutions holistically enhance consumer experience both as a problem-solving tool and a new means of interaction and the multidisciplinary studio has often been coined 'the anti-technology-technology company' because of its unconventional think-digital-act-analogue approach.