Alumna Angelique Rosales Salgado (BA in Art History with a Certificate in Museum Studies, 2019) has been selected among six fellows for the 2019-2021 MoMA/Studio Museum Fellowship program. The fellowship, a joint program between The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Modern Museum of Art, is a two-year fellowship aimed at mentoring and diversifying the next generation of museum curators and professionals. In addition to a stipend and access to global connections within the art world, fellows spend one year at each museum and work within either curatorial or education departments, gaining in-depth experience.
Salgado joins the 2019-2021 cohort as a Curatorial Fellow, working within the Department of Drawings and Prints at MoMA and reporting to Curator Starr Figura. One of her first projects will be assisting Figura with Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond, opening in March of 2020. During her second year, she will work at the Studio Museum with Legacy Russell, Associate Curator, Exhibitions.
“I know so much will unfold throughout the course of this fellowship, shaped by the current and future connections I am forging with colleagues, my cohort of fellows, artists and institutions,” writes Salgado. “I am excited to involve myself in opportunities that will diversify museum leadership and ask particular kinds of questions that expand dialogues and allow us to understand the many contexts of artists’ work.”
The two-year fellowship with MoMA and the Studio Museum comes on the heels of Salgado’s graduation from The University of Texas at Austin in May of 2019, where she majored in Art History, received a certificate through the Museum Studies program, and minored in both French and Women’s and Gender Studies. Outside of her studies, Salgado also took the opportunity to explore a range of career options through collaborative and independent projects, internships and research opportunities; including a curatorial internship with the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, a gallery assistant position with the Blanton Museum of Art, and an exhibitions internship with the Austin-based artist-run Museum of Human Achievement. These diverse venues would offer equally diverse experiences: at the Blaffer, Salgado curated a companion reading space for the 2017 exhibition The Propeller Group, while at the Museum of Human Achievement she developed a digital library archive of documentation images through close collaboration with artists.
During her time at UT, Salgado completed two thesis-related research projects: “Ana Mendieta: Embodiments of the Self/Other,” a capstone project in Art History, and an independent project associated with the completion of her Museum Studies Certificate titled, “Que es lo Tuyo: Latinx Artist-Run Spaces and Collective Practices,” where she researched the methodologies of Latinx artist-run spaces, collective practices and the development of alternative art spaces of color during the 1970’s-1990’s in New York City. The latter was facilitated by a research grant from the Bridging Disciplines Program (BDP) and support from Center for Latin American Visual Studies Associate Director and Salgado’s faculty mentor Adele Nelson. The grant would allow Salgado to self-publish a zine and travel to NYC to work directly with site-specific archival material and gather oral histories.
Lastly, “memorable courses that were cross-listed between departments introduced me to many historical and contemporary artistic perspectives currently rooted in my writing and curatorial practice,” writes Salgado. These experiences, projects and opportunities—in addition to many more—proved formative to Salgado in her undergraduate career and now instructive as she launches out into new ventures in the MoMA/Studio Museum Fellow program.