Dreaming American Futures: Invitational 250

Folayemi Wilson, associate dean for access and equity in the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State, is an object and image maker whose work celebrates the Black imagination as a technology of resistance and self-determination. She is a co-founder and principal of blkHaUS studios, a socially focused design studio that uses design as an agent of change to uplift and transform marginalized communities. She has been a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Propeller Fund, and a two-time recipient of an individual artist grant from the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies of the Fine Arts.

Early in her career, Wilson worked as a graphic designer and art director in New York, founding Studio W Inc., working for clients such as Black Entertainment Television (BET), Condé Nast Publications, Essence Communications, The New York Times, Time Warner, and Williams Sonoma, among others.

Wilson has been awarded residencies or fellowships at ACRE, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Haystack and MacDowell, among others. Her design work is included in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt National Museum of Design, and she has held previous academic positions at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Rhode Island School of Design, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and the California College of the Arts.

Recent work includes a commission from the City of Chicago and the CTA for public art as a part of a new subway station, an essay in Expansions, a publication of the 2020 Biennale Architecttura in Venice, Italy, and inclusion in The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection (2022), an anthology published by Allworth Press.

Roberto Lugo is a Philadelphia-based artist, ceramicist, social activist, poet, and educator. Lugo utilizes classical pottery forms in conjunction with portraiture and surface design reminiscent of his North Philadelphia upbringing and Hip Hop culture to highlight themes of poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Lugo’s works utilize traditional European and Asian ceramic techniques reimagined with a 21st-century street sensibility. Their hand-painted surfaces feature classic decorative patterns and motifs combined with elements of modern urban graffiti and portraits of individuals whose faces are historically absent on this type of luxury item – people like Sojourner Truth, Dr. Cornel West, and The Notorious BIG, as well as Lugo’s family members and, very often, himself. Lugo holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, among others.

He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2023 Heinz Award, a Philadelphia’s Cultural Treasures award, a 2019 Pew Fellowship, a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize, and a US Artist Award. His work is found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Walters Art Museum, and more.

Artist Lori Fisher is director of the Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County (BAM). Since its founding in 2008, the museum has been committed to showcasing the work of local and regional artists, as well as offering diverse cultural exhibitions. With a mission to enrich the community through accessible art education and cultural programming, the museum has become a hub for creative expression in Bellefonte, fostering both local talent and global connections. BAM provides free exhibition space to local and regional artists who are members of its juried Artist Registry.

Janine Yorimoto Boldt, curator of American art at the Palmer Museum of Art, recently served as associate curator of American art and collection reinstallation project associate at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned doctoral and master’s degrees in American Studies from William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia; and a bachelor’s degree in history and art history from Michigan State University in East Lansing. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation postdoctoral curatorial fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia from July 2018 through December 2020. Boldt has also secured fellowships with the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Virginia Historical Society, Winterthur Museum and Library, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Boldt has curated exhibitions for the American Philosophical Society, the Michigan Woman’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame, and the Chazen, including serving on the curatorial team behind the critically acclaimed re:mancipation project in 2023.

Her scholarly articles have appeared in Winterthur Portfolio, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and American Art, as well as in numerous anthologies. She is the creative force behind Colonial Virginia Portraits, an interactive database featuring more than 500 portraits associated with colonial Virginia. She is currently authoring a book based on her dissertation titled The Politics of Portraiture in Colonial Virginia.

Malavi Suresh is a second-year Penn State student. Majoring in Art History, she is currently studying medieval art and architecture from Europe and South Asia, with an interest in literature’s involvement with visual culture. She is in her second semester as a curatorial intern at the Palmer Museum of Art, where she has engaged in researching new acquisitions, updating object records, writing labels, and exploring stewardship in museums. She is involved with the Society for Indian Music and Arts on campus and serves as the student organization’s outreach coordinator.