Judges Panel

Mitchell Burleson is an interdisciplinary artist with a fiber-based practice. Mitchell began working in fiber during his time at NC State University, where he received his BS in Fashion and Textile Design in 2020. He continued his education at Haywood Community College, studying professional craft, and at the University of Kentucky, where he is receiving his MFA in Studio Art. Mitchell has exhibited at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Southern Highlands Craft Guild Folk Art Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and was the Grand Prize winner of Artfields 2024. Mitchell is from Clayton, North Carolina and currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

Ben Davis is the author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Haymarket, 2013), which ARTnews named one of the best art books of the decade in 2019, and Art in the After-Culture (Haymarket, 2022), which was named an art book of the year by the New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement. He has been Artnet News's National Art Critic since 2016. His writings have also been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Slate, Salvage, and many other venues. In 2019, Nieman Journalism Lab reported that he was one of the five most influential art critics in the United States. In 2025, he was named an essential member of the Art Press. He lives in Brooklyn.

Lauren Schell Dickens is chief curator at the San José Museum of Art. Since joining the museum in 2016, she has organized solo exhibitions and projects with Diana Al-Hadid, Sofia Cordova, Woody de Othello, Brendan Fernandes, ektor garcia, Glenn Kaino, Kambui Olujimi and The Propeller Group, and group exhibitions including Our whole, unruly selves (2021), Other Walks, Other Lines (2018), and The House Imaginary (2018). Her major monographic exhibitions Kelly Akashi: Formations (2022) and Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World (2018-2019), co-curated with Jodi Throckmorton, have toured nationally. Since 2020 she has been collaborating with the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at UC Santa Cruz on Visualizing Abolition, producing solo exhibitions with Sky Hopinka, Sadie Barnette, and Forensic Architecture, and the major exhibition Seeing Through Stone 2024-2025). Her most recent exhibition, Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape (2025), is the first major exhibition of Pao Houa Her’s photographic practice which explores diasporic constructions of homeland among her Hmong American community.

Dickens’ public project with The Propeller Group and El Mac was awarded the 2018 Creative Impact Award by the city of San José. She is a 2019 Warhol Curatorial Research Fellow, a recipient of the Fellows of Contemporary Art 2022 Curators Award, and a 2024 Teiger Foundation Grant Recipient. Prior to joining SJMA, Dickens held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Art and Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She holds degrees from Yale University and Columbia University.

Christopher K. Ho is an artist, educator, and organiser. From 2021-25 he served as Executive Director of Asia Art Archive, a Hong Kong-based non-profit dedicated to making materials on recent art in Asia accessible. His own studio practice addresses privilege and power. He is a board member of Asia Art Archive and Powerhouse Arts, and on M+’s Design & Architecture Acquisitions Committee. He is represented by 56 Henry and PHD.

Anne Collins Smith is the Chief Curator of the New Orleans Museum of Art. For two years, she served as the Director of the Xavier University of Louisiana Art Gallery. She is a veteran curator and arts leader whose practice incorporates the literary, visual, and performing arts. Smith is committed to safeguarding and advancing the legacy of Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ visual arts programs and art collections. For over 18 years, she served as the Curator of Collections at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, where she was integral to advancing and shepherding the collection and the establishment of the Curatorial Studies program. During her tenure, she fostered greater awareness of the College’s collection and advocated and secured the Museum’s first international loans.

Smith is a fellow of the 2021 Center for Curatorial Leadership program. In addition to her leadership roles, she champions civic service and participates in numerous arts selection and funding panels. She is active on the New Orleans African American Museum board, the New Orleans Museum of Art’s exhibition committee, and the New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Fund working group. She previously served on the board of the Association of Art Museum Curators.