Melissa Levin - September 2021
Melissa Levin is an artist-centered curator, values-driven arts administrator, and steadfast advocate for just and equitable practices in the arts. She has over 15 years of experience leading non-profit arts organizations and realizing ambitious public art projects and exhibitions.
For more than 12 years, Melissa worked at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) where she was the Vice President of Cultural Programs. Her role encompassed wide-ranging institutional and artistic leadership, including directing LMCC’s major artist-centered and public-facing initiatives. From 2010–2017, she led the inaugural and ongoing design and programming at LMCC’s multi-disciplinary Arts Center at Governors Island, supporting 60+ artists year-round and attracting 8,000 visitors during a 4-month public season. She oversaw multiple competitive artist residency programs, operating out of temporarily vacant commercial spaces in Lower Manhattan, and annually serving upwards of 100 artists. Melissa also curated and produced the River To River Festival, a critically-acclaimed, two-week, site-based festival, transforming over 25 public and historically significant spaces throughout Lower Manhattan and on Governors Island, ultimately producing more than 20 place-based projects for 100,000 audience members annually. Artistically, River To River deeply engaged with complex narratives and histories in sites and spaces, centered womxn, artists of color, and queer artists, and amplified underrepresented voices.
Within her decade-long multi-disciplinary curatorial practice, Melissa has also conceived and curated exhibitions including "(Counter)Public Art, Intervention, & Performance in Lower Manhattan from 1978-1993" (2015–16) featuring Jenny Holzer, Tehching Hsieh, Guerrilla Girls, and Pope.L, among others; and Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s experimental solo show, "A Supple Perimeter" (2017). Starting in 2016, with collaborator Alex Fialho, Melissa has curated exhibitions dedicated to the late artist Michael Richards, including "Michael Richards: Winged" at LMCC (2016) and Stanford University (2019). At Stanford, they also organized the interdisciplinary academic symposium “Flight, Diaspora, Identity, and Afterlife: A Symposium on the Art of Michael Richards.” They recently curated Richards’ first museum retrospective, "Michael Richards: Are You Down?" [https://mocanomi.org/2020/11/michael-richards-are-you-down/]—on view at MOCA North Miami from April–October 2021—and are currently editing and authoring Richards’ first monograph.
In 2017, Melissa’s extensive work with Michael Richards’ estate drew the attention of the art advisory firm Art Agency, Partners and she went on to lead their newly formed Artists, Estates, and Foundations division as Vice President in its inaugural three years. At AAP, she both shaped the strategy and vision for this new department and worked directly with artists, families, and estates to implement nuanced approaches to promoting their artistic practices, and to developing values-based initiatives.
Deeply committed to field-wide equity and artist-centered non-profit leadership, Melissa additionally serves on the boards of the Alliance of Artists Communities [https://artistcommunities.org] and Danspace Project [https://danspaceproject.org].
Melissa holds a B.A. with honors in Visual Art and Art History from Barnard College.