Beyond the Headlines: Resilience and Reinvention in the Gallery World

Brian Boucher is a journalist and critic whose writing about art, music and other subjects has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Artnet News, New York Magazine, CNN, Art in America, Cultured, and ARTnews. He studied art history and Vassar College and the Williams College graduate program.

Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle is an art dealer and curator based in New York City and the Founder of Gladwell Projects, an independent program dedicated to institutionally scaled exhibitions and nuanced, cross-disciplinary storytelling, guided by the principle “Do Nothing Without Intention.” Her ongoing exhibition series, Domestic Interventions, reimagines the domestic space as a site of cultural dialogue. The first edition, staged in Dallas, received national press in Interview Magazine and placed works into the Dallas Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Its forthcoming Harlem edition, The Spirituality of Color (2025), will be staged in a historic four-story brownstone at 124 West 131st Street. Boyle’s independent curatorial work has frequently centered on artists such as Reginald Sylvester II, Chiffon Thomas, and Kylie Manning, with whom she continues to collaborate across multiple exhibitions.

Before founding Gladwell Projects, Boyle held senior leadership roles at both Pace Gallery and CANADA. At Pace, she served as Senior Director and Global Head of Online, where she expanded the gallery’s program by bringing on painter Kylie Manning in 2022 and worked closely with artists including Lynda Benglis and Hank Willis Thomas. She also advanced the gallery’s digital strategy by founding Pace Verso, a pioneering platform that engaged new audiences and broadened the gallery’s global reach. Her curatorial debut at Pace, Convergent Evolutions: The Conscious of Body Work, paired 17 intergenerational artists from the program with others in her network, presented both at Pace New York and online. Before Pace, Boyle was Senior Director at CANADA, where she oversaw sales strategy, developed digital initiatives, and organized her first curatorial projects, including Black Femme: Sovereign of WAP and the Virtual Realm. Boyle’s practice reflects her commitment to fostering inclusivity, supporting underrepresented voices, and cultivating dynamic collector communities. Her perspective as a young art dealer continues to shape her vision of transforming the contemporary art landscape with intention and equity.

Nina Johnson is the founder and director of her namesake gallery in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood. Over the past eighteen years she has brought over 180 exhibitions by artists both new and emerging to Miami and forged partnerships around the world where she is recognized as a champion of artists. Legendary artists such as Judy Chicago, Betty Woodman, Beatrice Wood, Rochelle Feinstein, Terry Allen, Peter Shire, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Nicola L., Martine Barrat, and the Florida Highwaymen have exhibited at Johnson’s Little Haiti gallery. Many of the artists whom Johnson has represented have a dual focus in craft and collectible design, including Katie Stout, Anders Ruhwald, Dee Clements, Minjae Kim, and Bari Ziperstien. Various exhibitions and events organized by the gallery have been featured in the New York Times, T Magazine, Artforum, Architectural Digest, Elle Décor and numerous others. Johnson continues to work alongside the most important contemporary artists and historic estates to produce ambitious projects both within the confines of the gallery space and beyond. She has served on various committees for nonprofit organizations including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and the Miami Rail, an extension of the Brooklyn Rail that ran from 2012–2017. Johnson lives in Miami, Florida, with her husband, Daniel Milewski, and two children. They’ve spent their past seven summers in Deer Isle, Maine, where Johnson now serves on the board of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.