Abreihona
2023 grant amount: $10,000
Abreihona says this Aboveground Railroad grant will be used in the pursuit of a career in arts administration. "As a foster child eventually adopted by a single working-class woman, the direction of my life never seemed to point toward academia. Without the financial support of my family, I am even more driven to be successful in my chosen career which serves as a catalyst to work in arts administration. Consequently, my commitment to furthering my education as a first-generation Black student has been self-motivated and driven by my desire to increase the representation of Blackness in museums and the academy.
As a Black woman, I acknowledge that Black communities and nontraditional students seldom have the opportunity to claim museum spaces as their own. Therefore, I believe the most significant impact of art and arts institutions is reimaging representation for those outside of the dominant culture. As a first-generation college student, I am concerned with agency, accessibility, and inclusion throughout my arts administration work to shape equitable learning environments. My own experience as a student and in museum work led me to conceptualize a continuum between arts administration and curation that connects Black communities through the power of art, which has become my passion. My research centers on African diasporic art history of the 20th and 21st centuries, with a special interest in multidisciplinary artists such as Fred Wilson, Deana Lawson, and Robert Colescott. My broad intellectual project is to understand the relationship between Black visual satire and popular culture. My scholarship also examines distorted narratives of Blackness in art history by recovering the depth of the Black critical tradition in the history of contemporary art across media including photography, new media, fiber arts, and painterly abstraction."
Abreihona is pursuing a dual degree: arts administration and policy & modern and contemporary art history