Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 7 PM / Free Entry
The Little Haiti Cultural Complex
212 NE 59th Terrace
Miami, FL 33137

Please RSVP to administrator@miamirail.org to confirm attendance!

Ryan N. Dennis is the Public Art Director and Curator at Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas. Her work focuses on African-American contemporary art with a particular focus on socially engaged practices, site-specific projects, and public interventions. Since joining Project Row Houses in 2012, she has organized and co-organized six Rounds (PRH exhibitions) including Round 44: Shattering the Concrete: Artists, Activists, and Instigators (2016); Round 43: Small Business/ Big Change: Economic Perspectives from Artists and Artrepreneurs (2015); Round 41: Process and Action: An Exploration of Labor (2015); Round 40: Monuments: Right Beyond the Site (2014); and Round 39: Looking Back, Moving Forward (2013).

While at Project Row Houses, she also organized the Social Practice, Social Justice Symposium (2014), develops rigorous public programs, created the 2:2:2 Exchange Residency Program with the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and most recently Project/Site, a temporary, site-specific, commission-based public art program.

Prior to Project Row Houses, she worked in New York City at the Museum for African Art as the traveling exhibition manager, working on exhibitions which included but is not limited to El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa, Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria and Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope). She received her master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute where her research focused on the role of the artist as the administrator and cultural producer through residencies and collaborative programming. Ryan has also worked as a community organizer and a curatorial assistant at The Menil Collection in Houston, TX.

Her writings have appeared in online/print catalogs and journals, including Prospect.3 Notes for Now, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Studio magazine. She has been a visiting lecturer and critic at a number of art schools and art institutions throughout the country and taught courses on community based practices and contemporary art at the University of Houston.

The Miami Rail Visiting Writer program is sponsored in part by the Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture and the State of Florida.

Please RSVP to administrator@miamirail.org to confirm attendance!