Area Head of Printmaking in NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions, Noel W. Anderson received an MFA from Indiana University in Printmaking, and an MFA from Yale University in Sculpture. Anderson utilizes print-media and arts-based-research to explore philosophical inquiry methodologies. He primarily focuses on the mediation of socially constructed images on identity formation as it relates to black masculinity and celebrity. In 2018, Noel was awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant and the prestigious Jerome Prize. His solo exhibition Blak Origin Moment debuted at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) in February 2017 and travelled to the Hunter Museum of American Art in October 2019. His first monograph, Blak Origin Moment, was also recently published.

Art critic, curator, and art historian Robert R. Shane received his PhD in art history and criticism at Stony Brook University where he studied with Donald Kuspit. Robert frequently writes The Brooklyn Rail, and his scholarly work on gender and the politics of shame has been published in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia. He is currently associate professor of art history at the Center for Art and Design, Albany, NY, and a 2021 Guest Curatorial Consultant at the University Art Museum at the University at Albany. Robert’s current book project in progress is titled Mirroring Mothers: Witnessing Maternal Subjectivity in Contemporary Art.