Tabor Banquer (MS, Columbia University; BA, Louisiana State University) is a non-profit and fundraising executive with fifteen years of progressive experience securing transformative philanthropic investments for New York City-based arts and culture, healthcare, social services, and higher education organizations.

In January 2022, he joined the VLC’s team as the inaugural Director of Strategy and Advancement, a role he helped create with the intention of amplifying the VLC’s core capacities in the areas of strategic planning, fundraising, communications, marketing, public relations, and partnerships.

In his prior role as a Senior Director of Development at The New School, he oversaw the comprehensive fundraising programs for Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and the VLC. At Lang, he designed and led the successful rollout of the college’s first multi-year campaign, raising $21 million to support students, faculty, and innovation in the curriculum. At the VLC, he has raised more than $6.8 million to enhance and expand the center's work with artists and public programming. He has been responsible for significantly increasing funding from individuals, including the endowment of the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, as well as from foundations including The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and many others. Before joining The New School in 2012, he held fundraising positions at the Jewish Guild for the Blind, ICD-International Center for the Disabled, and Met Council, one of New York City’s leading multi-service anti-poverty organizations.

Tabor is a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and lives in Brooklyn.

banquert@newschool.edu.

Re'al Christian (MA, Hunter College; BS, New York University) is the Assistant Director of Editorial Initiatives at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, where she oversees the VLC’s publishing initiatives and partnerships. She edits and manages anthologies, artist books, exhibition catalogues, communications, and the VLC's biannual digital series Post/doc.

As an independent writer, her work explores issues related to diasporas, movement, media, and ecology. Her work has appeared in publications including Art in America, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, and ART PAPERS, where she is a Contributing Editor. She has written texts for numerous catalogues and anthologies, including Track Changes: A Handbook for Art Criticism (Paper Monument). She has presented exhibitions and public programs at CARA, Dieu Donné, Miriam Gallery, ISCP, Library Residency (Athens), the Rubin Foundation, Smack Mellon, and Verein K (Vienna/Graz), among other organizations. She is the recipient of a 2026 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. She has held appointments at the Hunter College Art Galleries, the College Art Association, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Association of Art Museum Curators, and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.

Christian received her MA in Art History from Hunter College and holds a bachelor’s degree in Art History and Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University.

Photo by Luis Corzo.

rchristian@newschool.edu.

Pablo Helguera (PhD, Kingston University; BFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago) is Director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics and The New School Art Collection. He is an artist, educator, and author based in New York. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Kingston University, UK (2013), and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1993). Since 2020 he has served as Assistant Professor of Arts Management and Entrepreneurship in The New School’s College of Performing Arts, where he oversees the Master’s program in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship. From 2007 to 2020 he was Director of Adult and Academic Programs in the Department of Education at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Helguera’s work as an artist and educator centers on socially engaged practice. He conceived and directed The School of Panamerican Unrest, a project of more than one hundred public programs across twenty-five cities in twenty countries of the Americas, and founded Librería Donceles, a Spanish-language used bookstore of 25,000 titles that has traveled to thirteen cities. His books include Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook (2011) and Art Scenes: The Social Scripts of the Art World (2012). He has curated Club Americano at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2017), served as Pedagogical Curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial, and contributed as Cultural Mediator to Manifesta 15 Barcelona (2024). A mid-career retrospective, Pablo Helguera: Socialscapes, is scheduled for 2027 at the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Eriola Pira is Curator and Programs Director at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. Most recently, as Director of Programs, Pira led Art in General's international collaborations, residencies, public events, and fellowship programs building on her professional networks and experiences as Program Director and Curator at the artist-founded NARS Foundation, as Program Director for The Foundation for Culture and Society, where she led a network and exchange program between 12 art organizations throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the US. In this capacity, she also organized a number of international exhibitions, publications and symposia, and created a Curatorial Fellowship.

She has presented exhibitions, talks, and collaborated with institutions worldwide including: BRIC (New York), Dokufest (Prizren), ExitArt (New York), Center for Contemporary Art Futura (Prague) Independent Curators International (New York), International Studio and Curatorial Program (New York), Istanbul Modern (Istanbul), Jindřich Chalupecký Society (Prague), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York), New York Foundation for the Arts (New York), Residency Unlimited (New York), Rubin Foundation (New York), Slought Foundation (Philadelphia), Slovak National Gallery (Bratislava), Studio Museum in Harlem (New York), Stacion Center for Contemporary Art (Prishtina), Swimming Pool (Sofia), Tirana Institute for Contemporary Art (Tirana), and many others. Pira was a Curatorial Advisor for the 2019 BRIC South Brooklyn Biennial and has served as editor at Guernica magazine.

A native of Albania, Pira has an MA in Visual Culture Theory from New York University and is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Global Cultural Leadership Fellowship, and a Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship.

pirae@newschool.edu

Adrienne Umeh (AB, Princeton University) is the Director of Finance and Operations at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. She spent over nine years as the Executive Director of the Arthur Ashe Learning Center, an educational nonprofit that created curricula, exhibits and other programming to promote the life and legacy of Arthur Ashe. She has managed a fundraising project that leverages art portfolios to support educational scholarships, logistics for various traveling exhibitions, taught middle school English in rural Tanzania and has helped publish multiple books and exhibition catalogs.

umeha@newschool.edu

Bella Blumenschein is an interdisciplinary artist and writer originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is currently pursuing an MA in Liberal Studies at the New School for Social Research, where she is investigating the impact of eros on the phenomenology of boundaries. Bella believes that Art has the power to bridge minds, bodies, and souls within and between individuals, and works across philosophy, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and the visual arts.

Carin Kuoni, Senior Director/Chief Curator, 2004–2026
Steven Lamy, Jr., Studio Institute Summer Intern, 2026
Jeannie Han, Graphic Design Student Assistant, 2024–26
Nandini Sharma, Programs Student Assistant, 2025–26
Rosaline Dou, ArtTable Fellow, 2025
Poppy Needham, GRoWing the Arts Fellow, 2025
Toto Tran, Programs Student Assistant, 2024-2025
Eliot Lambert, Programs Student Assistant, 2023–25
Jan Tancinco, Public Engagement Fellow, 2023–25
Sabrina Tenteromano, Public Engagement Fellow, 2024
Yanni Young, SPE Public Engagement Fellow, 2024
Ariana Kalliga, CCS Bard Summer Fellow, 2024
Camila Palomino, Curatorial Assistant, 2021–24
Zano Nkosi, Finance Student Assistant, 2023–24
Bella De Angelis, Programs and Publications Intern, 2023–24
Melisa Erşan, Graphic Design Student Assistant, 2023–24
Zaria George, Graduate Student Fellow, 2022–24
João Eduardo Pecanha De Freitas, Graduate Student Fellow, 2022–24
Paria Ahmadi, Curatorial Intern, 2022–23
Anna Hope Emerson, Finance Student Assistant, 2022–23
Rebecca Rivera, Database Management Student Assistant, 2022–23
Ash Moniz, Graduate Student Assistant, 2021–23
Angelica Hom, Evaluation and Reporting Senior Student Assistant Specialist, 2022–23
Chidinma Adi, Programs Student Assistant, 2022–23
Aryana Elizabeth Ghazi Hessami, Art and Social Justice Fellow, 2020-22
Tania Aparicio, Graduate Student Fellow, 2020–22
Marianne Hughes, Database Management Student Assistant, 2021–22
Regan Loggans, Borderlands Curatorial Fellow, 2021–22
Molly Ragan, Graduate Student Assistant, 2021–22
Nelly Kobanenko, Graduate Student Assistant, 2021
Sofia D’Amico, CCS Bard Summer Curatorial Fellow, 2021
Heran Abate, Curatorial Assistant, 2019–2021
Wen Zhuang, Assistant Director of Editorial Initiatives, 2020–21
Gabriela Ramos, Justice Capital Initiative Student Fellow, John Jay College, 2021
Maryna Arabei, Graduate Student Assistant, 2020–21
Joshua van Biema, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2020
Kevin Martinez, Student Assistant, 2020
Gabriela Lopez Dena, Curatorial Associate, 2018–19, and Vera List Center Graduate Student Fellow, Art & Social Justice, 2017–18
Bernadette Figueroa, Graduate Student Assistant, 2018–19
Katherine Jackson, Editorial Assistant, 2018–19
Corby Johnson, Vera List Center Graduate Student Fellow, International Affairs and Media and Culture, 2018–19
Emily Donnelly, Manager of Programs and Administration, 2014–19
Sonia Zhang, Graduate Student Assistant, 2017–18
Lara Fresko Madra, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2019
Diana Cao, Graduate Student Assistant, 2018–19
Amanda Parmer, Curator, 2015–18
Zoe Carey, Associate Editor, 2013–18
Jinglun Zhu, CCS Bard Summer Curatorial Intern, 2018
Pooja Seshadri, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2018
Nailah F. Davis, Student Assistant, 2017–18
Nina Olivetti, Graduate Student Assistant, 2017–18
Michael Castrovilla, Graduate Student Fellow, International Affairs, Media and Culture, 2017
Sanna Almajedi, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2017
Bianca Rogers, VLC Graduate Student Fellow, International Affairs, Media and Culture, 2015–2016
Marta Cacciavillani, CCS Bard Summer Curatorial Intern, 2016
Eli Nadeau, Graduate Student Fellow, Art & Social Justice, 2016
Johanna Taylor, Programs Associate, 2012–16
Sascia Bailer, Graduate Student Fellow, Art & Social Justice, 2014–15
Kaitlin Chan, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2015
Hannah Rocchi, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2015
Kyle Robert Nelson, Editorial Assistant, Speculation, Now
Chelsea Haines, Curatorial Associate, Biennial Prize Reader, 2012–15
Alani Bass, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2014
Juliet Tarantino, Fellowship Research Assistant 2012–14
Elizabeth Larison, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2014
Samantha L. Plesser, Summer Intern, 2014
Naomi Miller, Programs Manager, 2013–14
Jocelyn Edens, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2013
Miina Hujala, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2013
Annie Shaw, Senior Office Assistant, 2010–13
Agnes Szanyi, Archivist, 2012–13
Helena Vilalta, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2011
Sonia Louise Davis, Summer Curatorial Intern, 2011
Alyssa Pheobus, Senior Office Assistant, 2008–09
Julie Hartshorn-Snavely, Archivist and Special Projects Administrator, 2008–12
Rebecca Koppelman, Assistant, 2006-08