Brooke Kamin Rapaport is Commissioner and Curator of the United States Pavilion for the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. She is Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator and is responsible for the outdoor public sculpture program of commissioned work by contemporary artists. Through Madison Square Park Conservancy, she founded Public Art Consortium, a national coalition of museum, public art program and sculpture park colleagues. Rapaport was assistant and associate curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she oversaw the permanent collection and organized numerous exhibitions including Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960 (2001), and a series of installations in the Grand Lobby with contemporary artists such as Houston Conwill, Leon Golub, and Meg Webster. Rapaport was also a guest curator at The Jewish Museum in New York, where she organized exhibitions including The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend (2007) and Houdini: Art and Magic (2010). She frequently speaks on and moderates programs on contemporary art and issues in public art. Rapaport also writes for Sculpture, where she is a contributing editor. She serves on the boards of Socrates Sculpture Park, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. She earned her B.A. from Amherst College and her M.A. in art history from Rutgers University.

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are the exhibition designers for the U.S. Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Williams and Tsien began working together in 1977 and founded their architectural practice in 1986. Located in New York City, their studio focuses on work for institutions including schools, museums, and not-for-profits. A sense of rootedness, light, texture, detail, and most of all experience, are at the heart of what they build. Notable projects include the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the LeFrak Center in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Asia Society Center in Hong Kong and they are currently designing the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. They also previously participated in the 13th Annual Venice Architecture Biennale, with their curated exhibit “Wunderkammer”. Over the past three decades, they have received numerous national and international citations, including the 2013 National Medal of the Arts from President Obama and the Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects. Outside the studio, Williams and Tsien are active participants in a broad cultural community and maintain long-standing associations with many organizations devoted to the arts. Williams is a trustee at both the American Academy in Rome and the Cranbrook Educational Community. Tsien is the current president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Both are Fellows of the American Academy in Rome, and have been inducted into the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Academy of Design, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences In parallel with their practice, they maintain active academic careers and lecture worldwide. At various times, they have taught at such institutions as the Cooper Union, Harvard University, Cornell University, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania among many others. As both educators and practitioners, they are dedicated to creating a better world through architecture.

Darby English is serving as exhibition scholar for the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. He is the Carl Darling Buck Professor at the University of Chicago, where he teaches courses in modern and contemporary art and cultural studies. His research explores art’s interaction with established historical forms and its role relative to social change. He is the author of 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (2016) and How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (2007). A new monograph, To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror, will be published in February 2019 by Yale University Press. The book synthesizes new work with material first presented in November 2016 as the Richard D. Cohen Lectures at Harvard University. English also serves as Adjunct Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where – with Charlotte Barat – he is editing a book. Among Others: Blackness at MoMA, to be published in 2019. English’s work has appeared in Art Bulletin, Artforum, The Guardian, The International Review of African-American Art, and other venues. English holds a B.A. in Art History and Philosophy from Williams College and a Ph. D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester.

Miko McGinty began designing art books in 1993. Her first book, Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations, established her deep commitment to working with artists, curators, scholars, and museums. Trained in typography and letterpress as a Yale undergraduate and in book design at art publisher Harry N. Abrams, McGinty returned to Yale School of Art for her MFA in graphic design. Upon graduation, she launched her own firm with the book YES Yoko Ono. Her studio of four designers has created books for more than forty museums worldwide, including Asia Society, Fondation Beyler, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Hammer Museum, The Jewish Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Moderna Museet, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Yale Center for British Art. She has enjoyed close collaborations with artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang, Do Ho Suh, Joan Jonas, Jennie C. Jones, Glenn Ligon, Maya Lin, Claes Oldenburg, Martha Rosler, Sarah Sze and others. Among her other books of note are Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980; Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art; Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective and The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend.

Anne M. Wagner will write a major essay for the exhibition catalogue. She is an art historian, critic and teacher. Among her essays and articles are studies of Andy Warhol’s “Race Riot” paintings, the silhouette installations of Kara Walker, the role of language and vision in the work of Anne Truitt, and the topic of mortality in Charles Ray’s sculpture. Her books include Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the Second Empire (Yale University Press, 1986); Three Artists (Three Women) (University of California Press, 1996); Mother Stone: The Vitality of Modern British Sculpture (Yale University Press, 2005); and A House Divided: On Recent American Art (University of California Press, 2012). She is Class of 1936 Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2010-13, she was Visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of York, and in 2013-14, Visiting Professor at the Courtauld Institute. Since 2013, she has been a Trustee of the Henry Moore Foundation. In 2012, Tate Britain staged Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, which Wagner co-curated with T.J. Clark. Its catalogue was named among the Best Art Books of 2013 by Financial Times. In 2017, Wagner and Clark also curated Pity and Terror: Picasso’s Path to Guernica (2017), a major exhibition mounted by the Museo Nacionál Centro de Arte Reina Sofia to mark the bombing of the Basque capital in 1937. She earned her B.A. from Yale University in 1971, her M.A. from Brown University in 1974, and received her Ph. D. from Harvard University in 1980.

Tobi Haslett has written about art, film, and literature for n+1, The New Yorker, Artforum, and elsewhere. He wrote the introduction to Horse Crazy, a novel by Gary Indiana from 1989, reissued in September by Seven Stories Press, and recently contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue for a retrospective of the Iranian-American theater director Reza Abdoh. Haslett is a doctoral student in English at Yale University.

Madison Square Park Conservancy is the not-for-profit organization whose mission is to protect, nurture, and enhance Madison Square Park, a dynamic seven-acre public green space, creating an environment that fosters moments of inspiration. The Conservancy is committed to engaging the community through its program of commissioned outdoor public art, beautiful gardens, and inviting amenities.

Keats Myer, the Conservancy’s Executive Director, guided the 2015-16 Strategic Plan, which identified our art program and horticulture program as core priorities, and has also launched a $10 million capital campaign for the organization. As Executive Director at the Children’s Museum of the Arts, she oversaw the construction of a new museum (by Work AC), established the organization’s endowment, grew attendance from 13,000 to 120,000 and assembled a Board of Trustees. As Executive Director of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, she led planning, design, construction and fundraising for a new home designed by Lee H. Skolnick.

Conservancy staff with key roles on the Venice project includes Veronica Bainbridge, Director of Development, Julia Friedman, Senior Curatorial Manager and Tom Reidy, Senior Project Manager.

Since 2004, the Conservancy has commissioned and presented over 30 premier installations in Madison Square Park by acclaimed artists ranging in practice and media. The seven-acre park in midtown Manhattan has shown 35 large-scale art works in a vast range of media-including sculpture in all materials, video and light, performance and social practice. The Conservancy has developed a national and international reputation for showcasing challenging and inspiring works of contemporary outdoor sculpture.

Distinguished artists realizing projects in the Park include Diana Al-Hadid, Tony Cragg, Teresita Fernández, Josiah McElheny, Iván Navarro, Roxy Paine, Giuseppe Penone, Alison Saar, Arlene Shechet, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. Martin Puryear’s Big Bling was on view in Madison Square Park from May 2016 to April 2017. It traveled to Philadelphia in 2017 through the Association for Public Art, and will be on view in 2019 at MASS MoCA.