Board of Directors
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ATTORNEY: Nancy Schwartz-Weinstock is an attorney in New York City specializing in health care law. She retired from practice in 2015. After serving as associate general counsel in the legal affairs departments at three major medical centers in New York City, from 2003 until her retirement she served as General Counsel and Vice President for Legal Affairs for VillageCare, a not-for-profit health care organization offering residential and community-based rehabilitative, long-term and chronic care services in the New York metropolitan area. She received her Bachelor of Arts, Juris Doctor and Master of Laws degrees from Columbia University.
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PUBLISHER, GALLERIST, CURATOR & COLLECTOR: Works published by Steinberg's MS Editions are in the collections of New York's Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum of American Museum, and the Tate Gallery, London, among others. He has served on the boards of many of New York City's not-for-profit arts institutions, significantly shaping and supporting contemporary art.
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ARTS & CULTURAL MANAGEMENT: Amy Kaufman founded AK Cultural Planning in 2015, building on 25 years of experience in arts and cultural management. She has devoted her career – and service to NLE – to ensure that the building blocks of long-term sustainability are in sync, including mission-based programming, audience development, staffing, business strategy, brand, and governance. Current clients include: Studio Museum in Harlem, Storm King Arts Center, Oklahoma Contemporary, Marfa Contemporary and the Council of Jewish American Museums. During her 12 years as Managing Director at Lord Cultural Resources, Amy played a leading role in planning and strategy for leading institutions, including Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Central Park Conservancy; Vaclav Havel Library, Prague; National Museum of African American History and Culture; Longwood Gardens; Constitution Hill, Johannesburg; and National Museum of the American Latino (future). She teaches Museum and Non-Profit Management at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
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DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY FOR GLOBAL COMMERCIAL SERVICES, AMERICAN EXPRESS: Joanna Wu leads strategy development, special project execution, new opportunity assessment, and the monitoring of customer, industry, and competitive trends. Prior to American Express, she was a Senior Consultant with Simon-Kucher and Partners, where she advised Fortune 100 companies on a wide range of marketing and strategy issues, including revenue management, customer segmentation, competitive positioning, promotional effectiveness, and pricing. Joanna has a long-time commitment to the arts and holds a B.A. in History of Art from Yale University. She has been a friend of No Longer Empty since 2012.
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MCCLUSKEY FELLOW, YALE SCHOOL OF FORESTRY & ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AND SENIOR FELLOW, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL: Frances Beinecke was the past, and only female, president of NRDC from 2006 to 2015. Under Ms. Beinecke’s leadership, NRDC focused on finding solutions to some of the biggest environmental challenges of our time, including establishing a clean energy future that curbs climate change, reviving the world's oceans, defending endangered wildlife and wild places, protecting our health by preventing pollution, fostering sustainable communities, and ensuring safe and sufficient water. In 2010, Ms. Beinecke was appointed by President Obama to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. She has been a member of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board (SEAB) under both Secretary Chu and Moniz; the Advisory Board of the MIT Energy Initiative; and sits on the boards of the NRDC Action Fund, World Resources Institute (WRI), Climate Central, and Client Earth.
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SOCIAL IMPACT DESIGNER & STRATEGIST: April De Simone is a social impact designer and strategist with over 15 years of experience launching initiatives and ventures centered on systemically addressing complex social challenges. She co-founded the New York Metro Chapter of the Social Enterprise Alliance, founded and managed the social impact business Urban Starzz, and continues to work closely on a national level as a board member of organizations such as the American Sustainable Business Council and No Longer Empty on issues of race, equity design thinking, and a new economy. April received her Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies with a Dean Merit Scholarship from Parsons in New York, where she brought her life experience growing up in the Bronx into the conversation around equitable planning.
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DIRECTOR, KUNSTHALLE OSNABRUECK, GERMANY: Julia Draganović is a curator for contemporary art whose interest is focused on new artistic strategies. She has curated shows in Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the USA and Taiwan, including the curatorial projects of Bologna Art First 2010 - 2012 and at Art Miami 2009 - 2015. As founding member of the curatorial collective LaRete Art Projects she was in charge of the International Award for Participatory Art launched by the Legislative Assembly of the Italian Region Emilia-Romagna. In addition to serving as a board member for No Longer Empty, Draganović is member of the committees of the Outdoor Gallery in Gdansk (Poland) and was member of the Scientific Committee of Mudam, Luxembourg from 2010 to 2015. Past institutional positions include Artistic Director of the Chelsea Art Museum New York (2005-2006) and of PAN Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (2007-2009). Since 2014 Draganovic is President of IKT (international Association of Curators of Contemporary Art). Her essays have been published in numerous catalogues and art books as well as in the Kunstzeitung, Arte, Arte e Critica, and Flash Art.
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URBAN PLANNER AND CO-FOUNDER, NO LONGER EMPTY: As No Longer Empty's founding executive director from 2009-2016, Naomi Hersson-Ringskog launched the organization and co-developed its signature model of creative interim use for innovative historic preservation, creative placemaking, and community building. Since then, Hersson-Ringskog has started Department of Small Interventions that works on arts-based projects that foster community collaborations and engagement. As Swedish-American, Hersson-Ringskog is a graduate of Columbia University's Masters Program in Urban Planning with a focus on readaptive use and urban green sustainability. She has also worked with the New School Collaboratory- a program funded by Rockefeller Foundation that emphasizes collaborative design-led research and interventions. She served on the Executive Board of Columbia University's GSAPP Alumni Association, the Coro New York Neighborhood Leadership board and is active now in the American Planning Association, Forum for Urban Design, and is an advisory member for Modern Maputo and Institute for Public Architecture.
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Jon Kurland is an entertainment attorney at Sloss Eckhouse LawCo LLP in New York. His transactional practice includes structuring and negotiating a wide variety of deals across film, television, branded entertainment, and virtual reality. He also advises award-winning recording artists, composers, and other music industry clients regarding all aspects of their careers. Kurland serves on the board of advisers of The Current Museum of Art, as well as of 90sFest. Kurland holds a B.A. (summa cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Kurland is a Founding Member of No Longer Empty’s Contemporary Associates.
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CO-OWNER AND DIRECTOR, MAGNAN METZ GALLERY: Magnan Metz Gallery is co-owned and directed by Alberto Magnan and Dara Metz. The Gallery exhibits international emerging and established artists working in a broad range of mediums. Magnan Metz works closely with its artists to support complex projects in both the private and public sphere. The program focuses on non-traditional artwork incorporating mixed media, installation, video and conceptual sculpture. The gallery is proud to have presented the first exhibitions for artists such as Duke Riley, Alexandre Arrechea, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, and Sofia Maldonado.
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ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF LAW, ZICKLIN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: Alan is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law and Special Assistant to the Dean at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College. Previously, Alan previously served as a project-based lawyer doing corporate and commercial legal work for Fortune 500 companies and for many years was general counsel for a very large multinational insurance broker.
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SENIOR DIRECTOR, SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL IN ISRAEL: Rivka Saker has been with Sotheby's since 1982, when she established Sotheby's first office in Israel. In 1994 she became Managing Director of Sotheby's Israel and Senior Director of Sotheby's Europe. In May 2006 she was appointed Chairman of Sotheby's Israel. Rivka is philanthropically involved with several cultural institutions: the board of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Foundation, Muzot—a school in Jaffa for troubled youth, the Center of Contemporary Art, Doc Aviv, the MFA Program of Bezalel in Tel Aviv, and other art institutions and museums. Since 2003, Rivka has been involved with the Association of Israeli Decorative Arts (AIDA), which helps promote the work of Israeli decorative artists overseas. In 2004 Rivka established Artis, the Israeli Contemporary Art Week in New York, a yearly event established to promote and expose Israeli artists to the art world in North America.
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PRESIDENT & CHIEF CURATOR, NO LONGER EMPTY: Manon is also an independent curator working in New York City. From 2002 to June 2008 she was the Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum (CAM) in New York. During that time, she curated and oversaw a program of some forty exhibitions, symposia and museum publications as well as monographs and scholarly essays. Ms. Slome became highly involved with the Israeli art scene during her research for the exhibition, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on, (2005) and has followed and researched the Israeli scene for the last three years. Prior to the CAM, Ms. Slome worked as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum for seven years and was the recipient of the Helena Rubinstein curatorial fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study program. She has written widely on contemporary art and has recently completed The Aesthetics of Terror, published by Charta Press.
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FOUNDER/CEO, STREET ATTACK, LLC: Brett Zaccardi is an entrepreneur and founder of Street Attack, LLC, an experience marketing company with offices in NYC and Nashville, TN. Zaccardi has over a decade of experience in advertising and non-traditional promotion involving stunts, urban takeovers, and public art projects. He's served on numerous boards and done work abroad in Kenya, Japan, Germany and UAE. Zaccardi is specifically interested in the intersection of art and commerce and is developing a company called Birdbath & Beyond that pairs artists with brands in creative and authentic ways. He's also a partner in award winning restaurant Rolf and Daughters in Nashville TN.
Advisory Board
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Scherezade Garcia, born in the Dominican Republic, has lived in New York since attending Parsons The New School for Design on a full merit scholarship. Her work frequently evokes memories of faraway home and the hopes and dreams that accompany planting roots in a new land. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington, DC), El Museo del Barrio (NY), the Housatonic Museum of Art (CT), and El Museo de Arte Moderno (Santo Domingo, DR). Her art has been reviewed regularly in media such as The New York Times, Art Nexus, The Wall Street Journal, and El Diario. She received her AAS from Altos de Chavon The School of Design (La Romana, DR), BFA from Parsons The New School for Design (NY), and her MFA from The City College of New York. Garcia is currently on faculty at Parsons and is represented by Lyle Reitzel Art Gallery in Santo Domingo, DR.
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Jodie Dinapoli founded No Longer Empty’s Department of Education, where she designed programs aimed at human development and growth through arts and culture. In her years at NLE she also curated exhibitions and led cultural programs and community engagement initiatives. She has been an educator at the Art Students League and El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) in Spain, and has curated exhibitions at the Instituto Cervantes NY and the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C. She earned her M.S. in Leadership in Museum Education from Bank Street College of Education, an M.A in Art History from the University of Valencia, Spain, and a Certificate in Leadership in nonprofit management for after school professionals from Baruch College and the Partnership for After School Education (PASE). Jodie recently relocated to Spain, where she is bringing her NLE experience to study and program public art and education initiatives as a PhD student at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV).
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Ed is a social media consultant and successful blogger. Working as a real estate appraiser since 1998 has enabled him to become fluent about the histories of the five boroughs of New York City as well as the current social and cultural transitions of these areas. A lifetime resident of Melrose in the South Bronx, Ed has dedicated himself to social and environmental justice issues, which effect the neighborhood and the Bronx. Unhappy with mainstream media’s negative coverage of Melrose, the South Bronx, and the Bronx in general, he created websites to share the history and beauty of these neighborhoods and discuss with followers the issues that challenge the community, giving a voice to an otherwise voiceless neighborhood. His blog Welcome2TheBronx has become the most widely read and recognized Bronx blog (250,000 monthly visitors and a social media reach of 1.5–2 million weekly). Most recently, Ed and Welcome2TheBronx received the distinction of being awarded New York City's Historic District Council 'Friend In the Media Grassroots Award' in 2015. www.welcome2thebronx.com
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DIRECTOR OF EXHIBITIONS AND COLLECTIONS, THE WALTHER COLLECTION PROJECT SPACE: She holds a BA in African Studies from Columbia University and an MSc in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology from Oxford University. Onabanjo has assisted with exhibitions at No Longer Empty in New York, USA; The Museum of African Design in Johannesburg, South Africa; The Walther Collection in New York, USA and Neu-Ulm, Germany; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA. She has written and lectured on photography and contemporary art from Africa and the Diaspora, and recently edited the 2016 catalogue for the contemporary African Art fair, 1:54, in London, UK. Onabanjo’s research is informed by the relationship between photographic imagery and the social imaginary, and retains an overarching objective to mine the tensions between art historical, anthropological, and critical readings of visual and material culture from Africa.
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Tunisia Morrison is a born and raised New Yorker, working as a lobbyist, government and community relations consultant for New York City and States private sector. With decades of advocacy following her journey, Tunisia is the Co-Founder and President of The V.O.Y.C.E Inc (Voice of Youth Changes Everything) a non profit organization dedicated to enabling youth to proactively and positively impact the communities in which they reside. She is also Queens Community Board 12 member, independent curator and organizer.
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Gail Buckland is an author, educator, curator and authority on photography. She is the author or collaborator on thirteen books of photography and history. A graduate of the University of Rochester, Buckland is Distinguished Visiting Professor and the former Olympus Visiting Professor of the History of Photography at The Cooper Union, New York City where she has taught since 1979. In 1991 she held the Nobel Chair in Art and Cultural History at Sarah Lawrence College. She has also taught at Columbia College, Chicago and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Gail Buckland is the curator of numerous exhibitions including The Photographer and the City at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1977); the landmark Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography at the Pierpont Morgan Library (1979); Cecil Beaton War Photographs at the Imperial War Museum, London (1981); Shots in the Dark: True Crime Pictures at the Chelsea Art Museum (2003), based on her book and the Court TV special for which she was a consultant; and Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955-Present (2009-2011) organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
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Sarah Calderon is Managing Director at ArtPlace and former Executive Director of Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education in the Bronx. She has both a B.F.A. in Printmaking and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan. In 2000, she earned a Master of Arts degree (M.Ed.) in Arts in Education, with a concentration in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University. Ms. Calderon has been an artist-in-residence teaching photography and printmaking, worked with High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Michigan and at MPR Associates, Inc. She worked on program evaluation, policy analysis, curriculum design, and teacher professional development, concentrating on middle and high school reform. Ms. Calderon also served from 2002-2004 as the Vice President of the Board of Directors for Opera Piccola, an arts education nonprofit organization in Oakland, CA. Most recently, she worked with the NYC Department of Education's Office of the Arts and Special Projects as the ArtsCount Advisor, implementing the first comprehensive review of arts in schools across New York City and creating an arts accountability system.
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Jordan Isenstadt joined Ducere as its first Global Chief Communications Officer (CCO) in October 2014. As CCO, Jordan will be helping to launch Ducere, an Australian e-learning platform and social enterprise, in North America and Europe. Prior to joining Ducere, Jordan was the Deputy Director of the Association for a Better New York (ABNY) for 6 years where he created the Young Professionals Network, helped reposition ABNY as a thought leader and oversaw the planning and execution of the ABNY Power Breakfasts. Before ABNY, Jordan served as New York City Press Officer for New York State Governors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson, as well as Chief of Staff to New York State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky of Queens and Communications Director to New York State Senator Liz Krueger of Manhattan. He has a BA from Brandeis University in Political Science and Sociology and an MPA from Baruch College-CUNY. Jordan lives in Manhattan with his wife, Lauren, and daughter, Reese.
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Jose Parla is an artist who assumes several roles in order to create his work; he acts as a historical transcriber, and a visual raconteur. As a transcriber, he records his experiences in calligraphic and palimpsestic code. Serving as a collection of textually chronicled memories, the markings appear on backdrops that resemble the distressed surfaces he encounters , city walls marred from layers of paint, old posters, and years of neglect. As a storyteller, Parla presents a leitmotif of an enigmatic narrative, reaching to translate moments that only a visual dialogue can convey. As art historian Michael Betancourt, has written, “What Parla’s work provides to its viewers is a way to re-see the city and re-engage the value of urban life.” Jose Parla, born 1973, Miami, Florida, and studied painting at Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, Georgia and New World School of the Arts, Miami, Florida.
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Barbara London is curator of media and founder of the video exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art. Since the 1970s, she has pioneered in tracking the development of media art from its raw beginnings, and has guided the field to its current position as a seriously collected, sophisticated form of expression. London has curated more than 120 exhibitions, including one-person shows with Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Steina Vasulka, Joan Jonas, Gary Hill, Mako Idemitsu, Valie Export, Zhang Peili, and Laurie Anderson and thematic projects such as “New Video from China,” “Anime!” , “Automatic Update” and “Looking at Music 3.0.”
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Grimanesa Amorós was born in Lima, Peru and lives and works in New York City. She is an interdisciplinary artist with diverse interests in the fields of social history, scientific research, and critical theory. Through her art she conveys an ephemeral wonder, entrancing the viewers from all different backgrounds. Her works incorporate elements from sculpture, lighting, video, and technology to create site-specific light sculpture installations that engage architecture and create community. She is a recipient of NEA Visual Artist Fellowship, NEA Artist Travel Grant, Art In Embassies Program of the U.S., and was a speaker at TED Global 2014.
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George Calderaro is Director of Community Relations at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Formerly he served as communications director of The New School, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Historic Districts Council, the 29th Street Neighborhood Association and Victorian Society of New York as well as a committee member of the Landmarks50 Alliance, New York Public Radio Diversity and Inclusion New Advisory Board, and the New York City Board of Education Career and Technical Education Business and Finance Advisory Board. He is a former member of Manhattan Community Board 1 (co-chair of its Battery Park City Committee and a member of its Landmarks Committee), and founding member of Save Gansevoort Market Committee and Visual AIDS Night Without Light Committee.
