Curator Tour with Karen Comer Lowe

Karen Comer Lowe is an Art Advisor and Independent Curator in Atlanta. Previously she worked as Manager and Curator of the Chastain Arts Center for 12 years. She has a passion for the arts and has experience in museums, galleries, and arts institutions for over twenty years which includes positions at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, the Tubman African American Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has also worked as an independent art advisor, appraiser, lecturer, and curator working with acclaimed artists such as Amy Sherald, Rashid Johnson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Elizabeth Catlett among many others. Most recently and during the pandemic, Loew worked with internationally known artist Hank Willis Thomas in placing the sculpture All Power to All People in Atlanta as a stop on its tour across the US. Lowe also developed Creative Conversations, a conversation series hosted on Instagram with artists and professional arts workers working within the African Diaspora. Conversations include Hank Willis Thomas, Sanford Biggers, Sheila Pree Bright, Halima Taha and others.

Genevieve Gaignard is a Los Angeles-based, multidisciplinary artist whose body of work incorporates installation, sculpture, collage, and photographic self-portraiture to explore race, femininity, and class. As a biracial woman in America, Gaignard investigates the aesthetic and cultural divide between Black and White, a chasm as palpable as it is “invisible”. She interrogates notions of “passing” by positioning her own female body as the chief site of exploration - challenging viewers to navigate the powers and anxieties of intersectional identity. Gaignard’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions including: The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, D.C.; Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, AR; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; California African American Museum, CA; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, MA; and Prospect.4, LA. Gaignard received her BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and her MFA in Photography from Yale University.