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      Curator Talk

      Sculptural Legacies: A Curatorial Roundtable

      Thursday, March 5, 2026 from 6:30—8 pm

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      Marble sculpture of Commerce by Emma Stebbins, 1860.

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      Virtual program

      Free; preregistration required. 

      Emma Stebbins (American, 1815–1882), Commerce (also known as Sailor), 1860. Marble. The Heckscher Museum of Art, Gift of Philip M. Lydig III, 1959.355.

      Join a panel of museum curators for a "Sculptural Legacies: A Curatorial Roundtable on Emma Stebbins, Edmonia Lewis and John Rhoden," in partnership with the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York. This virtual discussion will focus on three recent single-artist exhibitions about three pathbreaking American sculptors: Emma Stebbins (1815–1882), Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907) and John Rhoden (1916–2001). Stebbins was a queer sculptor working in 19th-century Rome who is best known for creating Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain. Lewis was the first Black and Indigenous sculptor to achieve international acclaim in the 19th century, and Rhoden was a world-traveling Black sculptor who mastered a wide range of artistic media.

      As the first museum surveys of each artist, these curators’ exhibitions meaningfully repositioned them within their broader networks, featuring new archival discoveries and resurfacing previously unlocated sculptures. Go behind the scenes to learn about how these exhibitions unfolded, and how the curators approached similar questions and challenges in bringing to life the artistic careers of these three trailblazing artists.

      Speakers:

      Shawnya L. Harris, Ph.D., Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; co-curator of Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, now on view at PEM

      Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, Ph.D., PEM’s George Putnam Curator of American Art, co-curator of Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone

      Brittany Webb, Ph.D., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Curator of Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden

      Karli Wurzelbacher, Ph.D., Chief Curator at The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, Curator of Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History

      About our collaborators 

      Shawnya L. Harris
      Shawnya L. Harris

      Shawnya L. Harris is the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum of Art, a role she has held since 2015. She began her museum career in North Carolina and holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with a B.A. in African American Studies from Yale University. Her curatorial work includes major traveling exhibitions and their accompanying scholarly catalogues. Harris’ scholarship and exhibitions have earned multiple honors, including awards from the Southeastern Museums Conference and the Southeastern College Art Conference. In 2018, she received the James A. Porter and David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History for her publication Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection. A 2021 alumna of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, Harris was named Museum Professional of the Year by the Georgia Association of Museums in 2022.

      Jeffrey Richmond-Moll
      Jeffrey Richmond-Moll

      Jeffrey Richmond-Moll joined PEM in 2023 and now oversees an expansive collection that encompasses over four centuries of American art, culture and creative expression. Most recently serving as curator of American art at the Georgia Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Georgia, Richmond-Moll has a wide range of expertise in American art from the colonial era to the late 20th century. He pursues interdisciplinary, experimental curatorial strategies to tell compelling, inclusive stories about our nation’s past, present and future. His highly collaborative practice seeks to forge connections across media and time periods and unlock new ideas about American art and identity. Richmond-Moll received his Ph.D. and M.A. in art history from the University of Delaware and a B.A. in art and archaeology from Princeton University. He is the former co-chair of the Association of Historians of American Art.

      Brittany Webb
      Brittany Webb

      Brittany Webb is the Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her most recent exhibition, Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden, debuted at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2023 and is currently on view at the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester. She earned a Ph.D. from Temple University and a B.A. from the University of Southern California.

      Karli Wurzelbacher
      Karli Wurzelbacher

      Karli Wurzelbacher, Ph.D., is Chief Curator at The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, where she has curated more than a dozen exhibitions on American art. She is the curator of Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History. In addition to her work on Emma Stebbins, she has published on sculptors Courtney M. Leonard, Louise Nevelson and Jack Whitten. Prior to joining the Heckscher, she worked at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Columbus Museum of Art. 

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