BOARD OF TRUSTEES

 

Charles Kremer, Board Chairman
Charles Kremer was raised in England and attended Westminster College. He is the founder and president of Access Leasing Corporation, an equipment leasing investment company begun in 1984. Prior to this venture, Mr. Kremer was the president and chief operating officer of PLM Financial Services Inc., a publicly held equipment leasing syndicator since 1980. In 1984, Mr. Kremer founded Salestar, a telecommunications database company that he sold in 2000. In addition to all of this, Mr. Kremer is a chartered accountant. He is also an active member of the Board of Directors at the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum in California. His wife, Naomie Kremer, is an artist who has studios in Oakland and Paris.

 

Alberta Arthurs, Board President

Alberta Arthurs is a consultant for non-profit organizations. She has served on a number of for-profit and not-for-profit boards, including, at the current time, National Video Resources (chair), Yaddo, the American Symphony Orchestra League and UNESCO’s International Fund for the Promotion of Culture. Her background includes five years as President and Professor of English at Chatham College, and teaching and administrative positions at Rutgers, Tufts and Harvard Universities. Previously, Arthurs served as Director for Arts and Humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation where she oversaw national and international programming in culture and scholarship. She lectures and writes on the arts and contemporary values. Some of the publications that have featured her essays are Prairie Schooner, Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, Public Culture, and American Arts. In April, she was the co-chair of the conference that was part of Art Table's 25th anniversary Gala celebration.

 

 

Ida Applebroog

Ida Applebroog is an American artist. Her work is featured in numerous permanent collections of international institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, and Museum of Modern Art. A major solo exhibition of her work was organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC in 2003. Also, in 1998 she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and in 1990 the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Parsons School of Design where, in 2004, she participated in the Voting Booth Project. In addition to her artistic accomplishments, Applebroog self-published the books Galileo Works, Dyspepsia Works, and Blue Books. Accomplished, renowned and referenced in countless textbooks and publications on art theory, she has been quoted saying “This is our world, I dissect it, I assemble it, I call it art.” A comprehensive catalogue of her work was published in 2002 called Are You Bleeding Yet.


Papo Colo

Papo Colo is a multi-disciplinary artist and the co-founder and artistic director of Exit Art. He has conceived and curated more than 100 Exit Art visual art, performance/theater, film and video projects, and has created the graphic design and exhibition design for more than 80 Exit Art presentations. From 1991-1993, he founded and directed the alternative space The Cultural Space. In 1992, he founded the theater company Trickster Theater, which has presented seven productions including the web-based project M Play. His paintings and installations have been presented in solo exhibitions at the Museo d’Arte de Puerto Rico; the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus, Ohio; the Tyler Gallery at Temple University, Philadelphia; and the Herter Art Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1991 and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant for painting in the same year, and received an Individual Artist grant in Theater from the New York State Council on the Arts for M Play in 2001.


Deborah Colton

Deborah Colton was raised in Essex Fells, New Jersey and graduated with a BS in Marketing Management from Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut in 1979. Deborah worked in national account sales, sales management and product launching for 3M Company's Business Communications Division in New Jersey, New York and Houston, Texas until 1987. Deborah and her family moved to Tokyo and then Bangkok for a eight year period due to her husband's career with Exxon-Mobil, at which time Deborah became a patron of the arts in Asia. Moving back to the United States in 2000, Deborah founded the Deborah Colton Gallery which is an international contemporary arts gallery with it's exhibition space in Houston, Texas. Deborah was recently the recipient of the YWCA Women in Leadership, Texas Women of the Arts Award.


Marilynn Donini

Marilynn Donini is currently Director, External Affairs, Arts at St. Ann's in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Previously Marilynn was Manager, Contributions at Altria Group, Inc. where she was very active in pursuing the company's support to the visual and performing arts, the environment and education. Donini is also a board member of Art Table and The Wooster Group.


Fairfax Dorn

Fairfax Dorn was born in San Antonio, Texas and received bachelor’s degrees in studio art and art history from the University of Texas in 1997 and 1998, respectively. After graduating, she worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art as development coordinator, and then moved to Exit Art where she served as membership and exhibit coordinator from 2000 to 2002. In 2003 she co-founded the Ballroom Marfa, a non-profit space in Marfa, Texas dedicated to contemporary art and culture that presents a varied cultural perspectives explored through the visual arts, music, and film. She now serves as its Executive Director. Presently, Fairfax Dorn serves on the boards of the Lacoste School for the Arts (Savannah College of Art & Design), in Lacoste, France; the Brown Family Fund, in Houston, Texas; the Advisory Council for the Fine Arts College at the University of Texas at Austin; and with Lebermann on the University of Texas McDonald Observatory, in Fort Davis, TX.


Mark L. Epstein

Mark Epstein is currently a General Partner of Dara Partners LP real estate holdings and President of Ossa Properties, Inc. Real Estate Management. He is also a Licensed Real Estate Broker. Epstein is a co-creator of SomaChrome Inc., a producer of the first temporary tattooing system. He is a consultant and supporter to the Humpty Dumpty Institute, which is finding creative means to fund land mine clearance activities around the globe. Mark serves on the Advisory Committee for the New York String Orchestra Seminar and the Alexander Schneider Concerts at the New School. He holds a BFA from the Cooper Union For The Advancement Of Science and Art, where he currently serves on the board of Trustees, and was a past president of the alumni association. He was named Alumnus of the year in 2002. Mark is a Licensed Coast Guard Captain and life member to the United Nations Association, USA.


Frayda Feldman

Frayda and Ronald Feldman co-founded Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Gallery in 1971 and are currently co-directors. The gallery has mounted 250 solo and group exhibitions featuring over 1000 artists from the US, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and Asia. Frayda and Ronald are active in their ongoing fundraising efforts for the Democratic Party and related issues. In 1992 they received the Project VOTE award for raising funds to support the voter registration drive.


Ronald Feldman

Ronald Feldman is an art dealer and co-authored The Future of the National Endowment for the Arts, a transition report for President Clinton in 1993, before he was appointed by the president to the National Council on the Arts, where he served for five years. In 1997, he received the Larry Award from the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and in 1991 he was an adjunct professor of art history at Brown University. Ronald Feldman currently serves on the boards of Creative Capital Foundation, the Art Dealers Association of America, People for the American Way Foundation, and the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia University. He is currently writing a book that examines the content of art through the centuries.

 

Peter F. Frey
Peter Frey lives in Greenwich Village with his wife Carrie Shapiro. He is on the Board of Directors and is the head of the Finance Committee at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum as well as an involved president of Exit Art. After receiving a BA in Economics from Vassar College in 1982, and an MBA from Wharton in 1984, Peter spent 17 years at JP Morgan as the head of both US Fixed Income Sales and Global Emerging Market Sales. Currently Peter is a partner at The Rohatyn Group, an asset management company that is focused on Emerging Markets investments. Peter grew up in Austria.


Jeanette Ingberman

Jeanette Ingberman is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Exit Art/The First World. Prior to founding Exit Art in 1982, she was the Curator of the Bronx Museum of the Arts and a research consultant for the Brooklyn Museum of Art. She has an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University and did doctoral work at The Graduate Center of City University of New York. At Exit Art, she has curated over 100 visual art exhibitions, and overseen the publication of over 30 catalogs, writing introductions or essays for most of them. Her innovative work with Papo Colo in supporting unique experimental performance work was recognized with a “Bessie” New York Dance and Performance Award in 1995, and Exit Art’s 18-year retrospective The End was named Best Show in an Alternative Space by the International Art Critics Association in 2000.


Jenette Kahn

Jenette Kahn is a founding partner of Double Nickel Entertainment, a production company with a first-look deal at Warner Bros. in both movies and TV. Double Nickel just completed its first film, The Flock, starring Richard Gere and Claire Danes. For 26 years prior to forming Double Nickel, Jenette was President and Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics (home to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) and, later, MAD Magazine as well. She has been honored by the White House and the State Department for her work on drug awareness, landmines, and gun control. In addition to Exit Art, Kahn serves on the board of Aaron Davis Hall, Harlem’s Principal Center for the Performing Arts, and the advisory council of The W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard, from which she graduated. Kahn is also a founding member of The Committee of 200, the first national organization of women business leaders. Her book, In Your Space, was published in 2002.

 

Eileen Kaminsky

Eileen Kaminsky, a native New Yorker brought up in Belle Harbor, is the Vice President of Merchandising Gem Financial Services. She is on the Foundation Board of Directors for the Friar's Club. A mother of two, and grandmother of 5 great kids, she is a collector and student of art and French. Kaminsky graduated from Adelphi University, Suma Cum Laude.


Jerry Kearns

Jerry Kearns is an American artist who has extensively exhibited his work in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Australia, and Cuba. His artwork is in 35 permanent museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Represented by Modernism in San Francisco, CA, Kearns received his MFA from the University of California Santa Barbara and works as a multi-media visual artist. From 1980-85 Kearns was politically active and collaborated with Lucy Lippard on curating and writing articles in the Village Voice, Artforum and other publications about relevant social issues. He received the Rome Prize for sculpture in 1968-70 and has received numerous grants including the National Endowment for the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts. A well-known artist and active voice in the art world, he is referenced in many artistic publications, and is part of the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Art.


John Koegel

John Koegel is an attorney and founder of the law firm The Koegel Group. Since 1982 he has specialized in “art law”, exclusively representing artists, galleries, and others involved with visual art in most areas of the law including litigation. He attended Fordham Law School and initially joined the law firm of Rogers & Wells. After a two year appointment as counsel to a National Commission appointed by President Carter in Washington D.C., he served as General Counsel and Secretary at the Museum of Modern Art. Over the years he has been actively involved in the drafting of legislation affecting the arts, especially including the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (the federal law of moral rights for artists).


Richard J. Massey, PhD

Richard Massey was President and Chief Operating Officer of BioVeris Corporation and prior to that IGEN International, Inc. BioVeris is an integrated healthcare company, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, that develops proprietary diagnostics and vaccines. BioVeris is publicly traded and resulted from the merger between IGEN International, Inc. and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. Massey was a co-founder of IGEN International, Inc. and was actively involved in business development. He managed the research and development programs, intellectual property portfolio and operations at IGEN International, Inc. and BioVeris from1982 to 2004. Prior to IGEN International, Inc., Dr. Massey was on the faculty of Rush Medical College, Chicago and a Senior Scientist at the National Cancer Institute, Frederick Cancer Research Center. Massey received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois. He is on the board of directors for BioVeris Corporation and an ex-officio member of the company’s scientific advisory board. He has recently established a foundation to support fellowships in the arts and sciences. Massey is a visiting Professor at Lund University, Sweden, a member of the board of directors for White Box Gallery in New York and a committee member for film and media arts at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Massey has published numerous scientific articles related to the study of viruses that cause cancer, host immune responses to tumors and electrochemiluminescence methods for analytical measurements. Richard Massey has been awarded over 200 patents.


Edward L. Milstein

Edward Milstein is co-Chairman of Emigrant Savings Bank as well as co-Chairman of Milstein Brothers Capital Partners. He is heavily involved in real estate, banking and venture capital. Mr. Milstein also serves on the board of directors of the National Crime Prevention Council and the Citizen’s Crime Commission of New York City.

 

Leslie Moran

Leslie Moran and her husband Bill divide their time between New York City and Kent Cliffs, New York. After receiving a B.A. and an M.B.A. from Columbia University, Leslie devoted her professional career to marketing research. She owned her own research firm in NYC for more than 25 years, specializing in large-scale custom strategic studies for Fortune 500 companies. Now retired, she is a collector and a student of art.

 

Amy Newman

Amy Newman has written extensively on contemporary and modern art. She is currently writing a biography of Barnett Newman, and her recent book Challenging Art: Artforum 1962-1974 received critical acclaim. She has written numerous articles on art and culture for The New York Times. She is a collections curator for the Cravath, Swaine and Moore LLP, and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, law firms. Newman has taught at the School of the Arts, Columbia University, and was the managing editor of ARTnews magazine from 1978 to 1983, during which time ARTnews won: National Magazine Award, General Excellence (1981), George Polk Award, Cultural Reporting (1981), Silurians Award, Investigative Reporting (1978). She is on the board of directors for Landmark West! and serves on the Columbia University Art History and Archaeology Advisory Council and the Barnard College Arts Advisory Council. She was an advisor to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit on the Broadway and 66th Street subway station, and the Riverside South Planning Corporation. She holds an M.A. in Art History and Archeology from Columbia University and an A.B. from Barnard College.


Yigal Ozeri

A native Israeli, born in Tel Aviv, 1958, Yigal Ozeri is an artist who has been living in New York since 1990. In September of 2005, a major retrospective exhibition and accompanying catalogue of his work was organized by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, curated by Moti Omer, the Chief Curator and Director of the museum. He participated in Exit Art’s The End 2000, and La Tradicion 1997, and has been represented by the Mike Weiss Gallery for 5 years. In 2006, there was a retrospective of his work at the Musee Fleury in Lodeve, South of France. His work is featured in the permanent collections of the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv Museum. He has exhibited in galleries including Eric Dupont in Paris, Hieke Curtze in Berlin and Vienna, New Gallery in Houston TX and Alon Segav in Tel Aviv, Israel. His work has been featured in articles in Artforum, ArtNews, and Art in America. As an artist, Yigal Ozeri explores those things closest to him, like his children or the windows of his studio.


Mary Anne Staniszewski

Mary Anne Staniszewski, Ph.D., has written about art and culture for a diverse range of academic, art world, and general interest publications for twenty-five years. Staniszewski investigates art and culture in relation to social issues and as a means of promoting progressive aesthetic, cultural, and political perspectives. Her books include Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art (Penguin, 1995) and The Power of Display: A History of Exhibitions Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (MIT Press, 1998). She is currently writing a book dealing the myths of the United States, recent "technological revolutions," and contemporary notions of race, sex, and life and death. Staniszewski is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of the Arts at Rensselaer.