Leanne Mella
Guest Curator, CIFO
Leanne Mella is a contemporary art curator, specializing in American artists' work in film, video, performance, photography and new media. Among the exhibitions she has organized are Along the Frontier: Ann Hamilton, Bruce Nauman, Francesc Torres and Bill Viola, inaugurated at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and presented in other cities in Central and Eastern Europe; Set in Motion, an exhibition celebrating the New York State Council on the Arts' 30-year history of support for independent film and video; and Public Figures, a critical exhibition of installations and photo-based work at Indiana University. From 1994 until 2001, she directed Cross Currents, an exhibition and exchange program that she developed, linking American and Russian contemporary artists.
More recently, Ms. Mella served for close to seven years as the manager of International Visual Arts Programs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She was responsible for programs supporting the participation of U.S. artists in major international exhibitions and cultural exchange programs in the visual arts. Ms. Mella worked with U.S. curators and artists and exhibition organizers abroad to support exhibitions, develop public programs and residency opportunities, and produce publications for official participation at biennial exhibitions in sites as diverse as Venice, Italy; Dakar, Senegal; Cairo and Luanda, Angola. During her tenure, Ms. Mella greatly expanded the size, scope and levels of U.S. government support for the program.
Ms. Mella has consulted extensively to non-profit arts and culture organizations in the U.S. and abroad. She has organized exhibitions and lectured at numerous institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York State Council on the Arts; New Museum of Contemporary Art; the Film Society of Lincoln Center; Open Society Institute and Pro Arte, St. Petersburg, Russia; Video Data Bank of the Art Institute of Chicago; Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria and the Finnish Art Academy.
