A Coincidence of Wants, the Shape of Value

Vinicius de Aguiar Furuie is a Brazilian anthropologist who has published works on Amazonia and Japan. He has family roots in both places and grew up in Brazil, where he studied anthropology at the University of São Paulo. He earned a PhD in anthropology from Princeton University and an MA from the University of Tokyo and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His work on the glass-bead trade in Amazonia has been published in the Harvard Review of Latin America and resulted in a display at the inaugural exhibition of the Humboldt Lab in Berlin.

Denise Ferreira da Silva is a philosopher and artist. She is currently Samuel Rudin Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007), Unpayable Debt (2022), and The Impagavel Divide (2019) and coeditor with Paula Chakravartty of Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (2013). Her artwork includes the films Serpent Rain (2016), 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), and Soot Breath / Corpus Infinitum (2020, with Arjuna Neuman) and the relational artistic practices Poethical Readings and The Sensing Salon (with Valentina Desideri). She has performed shows and lectures in spaces such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), MASP (São Paulo), Guggenheim (New York), and The Museum of Modern Art (New York). She has also written and created publications for major art events including the Liverpool Biennial (2017), São Paulo Biennial (2016 and 2023), Venice Biennale (2023), and Documenta 14 (2017) and has published texts in art journals such as Canadian Art, Texte zur Kunst, and e-flux. 

Nadia Yala Kisukidi is a writer and philosopher. Currently associate professor in philosophy at Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis University, she was previously vice president of the Collège international de philosophie, Paris (2014–16) and a fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Columbia University, New York (2022–23). She is a member of the editorial committee for Les Cahiers d’Études africaines (EHESS) and cocurated Yango II – Biennale de Kinshasa, DRC (2022). Her publications include Bergson ou l’humanité créatrice (2013), Dialogue transatlantique (with Djamila Ribeiro, 2021), and the novel La Dissociation (2022). In 2023 she coordinated the book Colonisations. Notre histoire (with Mélanie Lamotte, Arthur Asseraf, and Guillaume Blanc, edited by Pierre Singaravélou). She has also edited many essays and written many articles on French and Africana philosophy. Her essay “Walking Barefoot” was published in Borders, Human Itineraries, and All Our Relation (2023).

Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow is Anishinaabe and Kanien’kehá:ka and a member and citizen of Whitefish River First Nation with maternal roots in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory. Born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Nahwegahbow recently held the position of Associate Curator of Historical Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada and is now a faculty member at Carleton University, cross-appointed with the Department of History and the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture. Nahwegahbow specializes in visual and material culture from her traditional territories in the Great Lakes region. She has experience working with ancestral belongings in museums and galleries internationally and has worked with contemporary Indigenous artists on a range of creative and curatorial projects.

Karin Pallaver is associate professor of African history at the University of Bologna, where she teaches African history and Indian Ocean history. She was previously researcher at the British Museum, London, and from 2018 to 2020 was president of the Association of African Studies in Italy. She has published texts in several books and journals, including History in Africa, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Journal of Eastern African Studies, African Economic History, and African Studies Review. She recently edited the volume Monetary Transitions: Currencies, Colonialism and African Societies (2022). She has a PhD in history from the University of Cagliari, Italy.

Michael J. Prokopow is a cultural historian and curator whose areas of expertise include material and visual culture, design history, architectural theory, and critical theory. His recent publications include Reside: Contemporary West Coast Houses (2024), Hurvin Anderson (2021), Smith House II (2018), and an upcoming book on the artist June Clark. Between 2004 and 2008, he was curator of the Design Exchange, Toronto. In 2012, he curated an exhibition surveying the work of George Baird, and in 2016, he cocurated the touring exhibition True Nordic: How Scandinavia Influenced Design in Canada. In 2023 and 2024, he was a visiting scholar at the Yale Center for British Art. He sits on the boards of the Arthur Erickson Foundation and the Nathaniel Dett Chorale and he is a regular contributor to Studio: Craft and Design in Canada. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is a faculty member at OCAD University, Toronto. 

Anne Ruderman is an assistant professor of economic history at the London School of Economics. Her first book, Supplying the Slave Trade, will be published by Yale University Press in 2025. Her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Science Foundation, and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, among others. Ruderman received her PhD from Yale University and her AB from Princeton University. She began her career as a staff reporter for the International Herald Tribune’s Italy Daily in Milan.

Pierre Niccolò Sofia is a postdoctoral researcher at Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy, where he is carrying out a comparative analysis of the economic resilience of the Venetian glass and silk industries and trades in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 2022 he obtained a PhD from Université Côte d’Azur with a dissertation on the Venetian glass beads industry and trade in the eighteenth century. In 2022 and 2023 he worked as postdoctoral researcher in the ANR PORTIC program at the Université Côte d’Azur, studying French shipping and maritime trade in the second half of the eighteenth century. His research interests extend to economic history, history of labor, and maritime history.

Mabel O. Wilson is the Nancy and George E. Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a professor in African American and African Diaspora studies at Columbia University, New York. With her practice Studio&, she codesigned the recent Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Exhibitions of her work have been featured at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, SFMoMA, Art Institute of Chicago, Istanbul Design Biennial, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Wilson is the author of Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016) and Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012) and coedited the volume Race and Modern Architecture: From the Enlightenment to Today (2020). She was cocurator of the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2021).

Royce K. Young Wolf is a Hidatsa, Mandan, and Eastern Shoshone mother, language and culture activist, curator, and artist. She is a member of the Ih-dhi-shu-gah (Wide Ridge) Clan and is a child of the Ah-puh-gah-whi-gah (Low Cap) Clan. She has a PhD in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Native American art and curation at Yale University. She prioritizes culturally responsive care and relationship (re)making as the inaugural Assistant Curator of Native American Art at the Yale University Art Gallery and as collection manager of the Native American Collections at the Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven. 
 

Moderator
Assistant Curator, Special Projects (Venice)
National Gallery of Canada 

Anaïs Castro is a curator and writer based in New York and Montreal. She currently works as assistant curator, special projects (Venice) at the National Gallery of Canada. Over the past 15 years, Castro has curated more than 20 exhibitions and projects in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, and China. She was part of the inaugural Shanghai Curators Lab (2018), was a curator in residence at the International Studios & Curatorial Practice, Brooklyn (2021); Artpace, San Antonio (2019); Art in General, Brooklyn (2019); and Titanik, Turku (2017); and was a visiting critic at BCA, Burlington (2016). She has been invited to speak at various institutions, including Parsons School of Design, Triangle Arts Association, and School of Visual Arts in New York; Centre Clark and la Galerie de l’UQAM in Montreal; and others. She is also a regular contributor to various art publications.

Moderator
Art Historian and Curator
 
Costanza Longanesi Cattani is an art historian and independent curator born and based in Venice. In 2023 she collaborated with the National Gallery of Canada, serving as a research assistant to Kapwani Kiwanga in the realization of the 2024 Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, focusing on researching Venetian bead-making techniques as well as the history of the trade of conterie carried out by the Venetian Republic. Over the past four years, Costanza has been working as a project leader in the development of several national pavilions and collateral events at the Venice Biennale. Concurrently, she has curated site-specific exhibitions in Venice, collaborating with both local and international artists, with a frequent focus on glass. Costanza holds a postgraduate degree from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and a bachelor’s degree in economics and art management from Bocconi University, Milan. Additionally, she is a certified gemmologist and a fellow of Gem-A, London.

Moderator
Head of Learning & Public Practice
Wexner Center for the Arts

Dionne Custer Edwards is a writer, educator, and head of Learning & Public Practice at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Her work encompasses creating, leading, and supporting groundbreaking art and education programs, as well as a commitment to access and inclusion in arts and education spaces. Edwards also teaches and is affiliated faculty in Ohio State’s Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy. Her critical and literary writing has been published in journals and anthologies, including Sanat Dünyamiz (Turkey), Revista GEARTE (Brazil), the University of Arizona’s Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Barren Magazine, Entropy, Flock, Gordon Square Review, Grist, The Journal, Porter House Review, Storm Cellar, The Seventh Wave, Tahoma Literary Review, and others. She is also a coeditor of a forthcoming book series to be published by The Ohio State University Press, On Possibility: Social Change and the Arts + Humanities. 

Moderator
Curator, Public Programs
Wexner Center for the Arts

Emily Haidet is curator of public programs in the Department of Learning & Public Practice at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Emily develops, plans, and realizes inclusive and accessible public talks, panels, gatherings, and informal education experiences in collaboration with artists and scholars at Ohio State and around the world. Joining the Wexner Center in September 2021, Emily has more than 12 years of experience in museum education and nonprofit contexts, programming for diverse audiences from central Ohio to New York City. She previously worked at the American Museum of Natural History (the Hayden Planetarium and Margaret Mead Film Festival), Rubin Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She holds a BA in sociology and anthropology from Denison University, Ohio, and an MA in museum studies from New York University.

Moderator
Art Historian and Curator

Carolin Köchling is an art historian and curator. Since 2023 she has been adjunct curator at Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project. Previously, she was associate curator at large at Gropius Bau in Berlin (2022–24), Nuyten Dime Curator at Large and head of the curatorial department at The Power Plant in Toronto (2016–22), and held curatorial positions at Schirn Kunsthalle and Städel Museum in Frankfurt (2010–15). She has curated exhibitions at Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo (2020) and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2017) and was part of the curatorial team for the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2019).

Artist, Trinket

Kapwani Kiwanga is a Canadian and French artist based in Paris. Her solo exhibitions have been presented at prominent institutions such as MOCA Toronto, Haus der Kunst in Munich, New Museum in New York, Copenhagen Contemporary, CAPC – Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Serralves in Porto, and MIT List in Cambridge, Massachusetts, among others. In 2023 Kiwanga was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a fellowship at the French Academy in Rome’s Villa Medici. In 2022 she received the Zurich Art Prize and a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University. She was also the winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2020 and the Frieze Artist Award and Sobey Art Award in 2018.

Curator, Trinket
Executive Director 
Wexner Center for the Arts

Gaëtane Verna is a Canadian curator based in Columbus, Ohio. She is executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. From 2012 to 2022, she was director and artistic director of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto. From 2006 to 2012, she was executive director and chief curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette. From 1998 to 2006, Verna served as curator of the Foreman Art Gallery at Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, while also teaching in the art history department of both Bishop’s University and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Since 1992 Verna has curated and organized exhibitions by contemporary Canadian and international artists, and she has edited and contributed essays to numerous publications. In 2017 Verna was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government.