2024 Jurors

Driven by her lifelong passion for community building through design, Frances Bernardo specializes in connecting artists to opportunities and each other. With a keen eye for innovation, Frances has collaborated with dynamic startups and established businesses across cities like Los Angeles and Detroit, driving creative solutions that elevate communities. As the current leader of Business Programs for Design Core Detroit, she is on the front lines of nurturing talent, offering invaluable coaching and professional development to both emerging and seasoned designers. Through her work managing Detroit's UNESCO City of Design Designation and The Detroit Month of Design, Frances is dedicated to empowering a new wave of creative entrepreneurs, ensuring Detroit remains a hub of design excellence and community resilience.

CARLO McCORMICK is a pop culture critic and curator living in New York. He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and artists and has lectured and taught extensively at universities around the United States. His writing has appeared in Aperture, Art in America, Art News, Artforum, Camera Austria, High Times, Spin, Tokion, Vice, and countless other magazines. He was senior editor of the Paper magazine.

Francesca Pessarelli (she/her, b. 1996, Pittsburgh PA) is an independent curator, freelance writer, and gallery worker based in New York City. Pessarelli graduated with her bachelors degree in Art History and French Language from University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2018. She has since participated in the Solomon R. Guggenheim curatorial internship, was a gallery assistant at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (NY), and now serves as the associate director at Ceysson & Bénétière Gallery (NY). All the while, Pessarelli has pursued personal curatorial, editing, and writing projects.

Lora Robertson is Executive Director of Satellite Collective in New York City, an arts non-profit committed to the process of authentic collaboration, carefully selecting individual artists from larger organizations like New York City Ballet, The Juilliard School, and Alvin Ailey to produce original art form mash-ups. She is an award-winning photographer and filmmaker, showing work extensively throughout New York City. In 2024, Gothamist called her May exhibition, “The top twelve fun and mostly free to see in NYC”. Lora is currently working on a film about Cleopatra as a complete person. She will take on a muse but only if bets are lost.

Jason Wesaw is a multi-disciplinary artist, exhibiting works in an array of media including ceramics, textiles, works on paper, and traditional cultural pieces. His projects relate stories about the Potawatomi people’s ancient and evolving connection to the Land, Sky, Water, and the Beyond. Based in Michigan, Wesaw balances being an artist with working in his Tribal community as a Peacemaker. His work is in the permanent collections of the Center for Native Futures (IL), Grand Valley State University (MI), the University of Notre Dame (IN), the Newberry Library (IL), and many other regional institutions.

Dr. Rachel Winter is a curator, art historian, and award-winning author. Winter is Assistant Curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, where she is currently based. Her most recent exhibitions include "Samia Halaby: Eye Witness," the artist’s first American museum retrospective, as well as "Kayla Mattes: DOOMSCROLLING," the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, and "Blind Spot: Stephanie Syjuco." She co-edited the book "Samia Halaby: Centers of Energy" with Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert, which was named outstanding monograph by the Midwest Art History Society. As an art historian, her research focuses on modern and contemporary West Asia and North Africa. Winter writes broadly about modern and contemporary art from the SWANA region, American art, and museums, and has published her research in forums such as Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art and the International Journal of Islamic Architecture.