Survival and Success: Women of Color in the Arts

Join us for a panel discussion with Suhaly Bautista Carolina, Senior Managing Educator of Audience Development, Metropolitan Museum of Art; SVA MFA Fine Arts faculty members Jasmine Wahi, Holly Block Curator of Social Justice, Bronx Museum of Art; and Sheetal Prajapati, Principal/Founder, Lohar Projects, as they share their stories of how they navigated the field to their current roles. Their conversation will provide insights into what kind of support/community; or lack thereof, were critical in their trajectory; personal and professional, lessons they have learned along the way, and how their current work contributes to supporting other women/people of color; and why that's important!

If you are able, please donate at least $15 to support POWarts in hosting these programs.

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Suhaly Bautista-Carolina is a community organizer, spiritual herbalist, and arts administrator. Born in New York City to AfroDominican parents, her work is rooted in harnessing the collective power and impact of community. Before joining the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) as the Director of Public Programs, Suhaly served as the Engagement & Education Manager at the public art nonprofit, Creative Time. In 2017, while in the role of Community Relations Manager at Brooklyn Museum, Suhaly also worked as Community Partnership Consultant for ArtBuilt Mobile Studios. She is the founder of the Afrofuturism book club, Black Magic, former Curator of Myrtle Avenue’s Black ArtStory Month, and has worked in various capacities with organizations such as The Laundromat Project, Artspace, FOKUS, and The Brooklyn Children's Museum. She is a 2016 alumna of CCCADI’s Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship and a graduate of Columbia University's Summer Teachers and Scholars Institute, "The Many Worlds of Black New York." Her photographic documents and writings have been published in La Galeria Magazine, United Nations’ International Museum of Women, and Caribbean Vistas Journal. Suhaly is a Weeksville Ambassador and serves on the Advisory Boards to Black Girl Project and More Art. Suhaly earned her B.A. and MPA from NYU, where she was named one of “NYU’s 15 Most Influential Students.” She joined The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019 as the Senior Managing Educator of Audience Development & Engagement.

Jasmine Wahi is a Curator, Activist, TEDx Speaker, and a Founder and Co-Director of Project for Empty Space. Since February, Wahi has served as the Holly Block Social Justice Curator at the Bronx Museum. Her practice predominantly focuses on issues of femme empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multipositional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism. In 2010, Ms. Wahi Co-Founded Project For Empty Space, a not-for-profit organization that creates multidisciplinary art exhibitions and programming that encourage social dialogue, education, and systemic change through the support of both artists and communities. In 2015, Ms. Wahi joined Rebecca Jampol to open a brick and mortar gallery for PES Newark, NJ. Though she does not consider herself to be an artist, Ms. Wahi has organized numerous interventions and happenings as part of her social activist work. In 2018, she served as the Co-Chair “Rape, Radicality, and Representation” for the College Art Association's "Day of Panels" with The Feminist Art Project (TFAP). organizing a day of intersectional feminist based performances, films, and conversations. In 2019, she spoke at TEDxNJIT on the idea of Resilience. In 2020, she curated the two part exhibition Abortion Is Normal, which received wide critical acclaim, and will be touring cross country as part of a campaign to get out the vote. In addition to her other work, Ms. Wahi a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts: MFA Fine Arts department. She is a former board member of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC), and a volunteer instructor for the Girls Educational Mentoring Services (GEMS) group. Ms. Wahi’s curatorial work has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Art News, Art Forum, Hyperallergic, Bloomberg, VICE, and NOWTHIS, to name a few.

Sheetal Prajapati is a Brooklyn-based educator and artist. Sheetal is the Principal and Founder of Lohar Projects, a boutique advising agency working with individual artists and cultural organizations with a focus on professional development, public engagement, organizational planning, and new initiatives. Sheetal serves on faculty at the School of Visual Arts (New York) in the Master of Fine Arts program and is a founding board member at Art+ Feminism, a non-profit organization dedicated to building and expanding diversity among contributors and content on Wikipedia. Previously, Sheetal spent 15 years leading and building teams to develop engagement, outreach, and special initiatives for diverse audiences of all ages at organizations including Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. From 2014-2016, Sheetal co-curated Open Engagement, an international conference on art and social practice and in 2016-2017, she and curator Anna Harsanyi organized Game Night, a series of free public events presenting artist-made games for play in New York. She received her MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Northwestern University.