Building HueSpaces is a series that centers the creation of museums and other arts enclaves founded and led by Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latine, and all People of Color. Created through partnership between Museum Hue and American Institute of Architects (AIA) NY Cultural Facilities Committee, this five-part series highlights topics such as assessing capital needs for your organization, capital fundraising, building your capital project team, accessibility as a foundation for your project, and more. Designed to provide greater insight into how these spaces were acquired and their capital projects developed, it demonstrates the critical need for greater racial equity and representation within NYC’s built environment and arts landscape. Through case studies of select NYC-based arts entities this series will provide a step-by-step toolkit to support other arts entities founded and led by arts and cultural leaders of color who are seeking guidance on how to attain a brick and mortar of their own.

Building HueSpaces stems from the research findings and recommendation in the HueArts NYC Brown Paper report led by Museum Hue, which highlights a greater need in investing in place as a long-term strategy for Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latine, and all People of Color arts stability and thrivability.

All Building HueSpaces events will have live captioning and transcripts available with the release of the recording.

Session II: Roadmap

After considering how to start a capital project, it’s time to build a roadmap of successful and actionable next steps. Session 2 of the Building HueSpaces workshop series, co-hosted by The Clemente, will cover how to assemble the right team, create a reasonable and realistic timeline with specific project milestones, the process of acquiring a city-owned building, and expectations of having a city-owned-building. Moderated by Museum Hue and AIA, owner’s reps, an attorney, architects, and The Clemente will share their experiences on these topics. Resources and the recording of Building HueSpaces Session 2: Roadmap will be available one week following the live session. Learn more about the speakers and purchase tickets below.

Speakers

Annya Ramírez-Jiménez, AIA is a Director at MARVEL. She is passionate about equity and focuses on building cities that serve all residents. Primarily focusing on leading civic projects and affordable housing, Annya oversees the architecture practice collaboration between MARVEL offices located in San Juan, Richmond & New York City. Currently working on the Bronx Museum of the Arts renovation, Annya serves on various boards of not-for-profit organizations including The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, The Sato Project, and as treasurer of the board of The Clemente Center. She also serves on the AIANY Honors Committee. Originally from Puerto Rico and with New York City as her home base, Annya received a Bachelor’s in Environmental Design from the University of Puerto Rico School of Architecture and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University.

Libertad O. Guerra is an anthropologist, curator, and cultural organizer/producer with vast arts management experience specializing in the startup phase and strategic turnaround of community-based cultural organizations with an intersectional approach. She has led the creation of incubation NYC spaces and collectives of Latinx/ POC cultural production, organizing, education, and environmental justice activism. Her academic research/symposia have focused on Puerto Rican, Latinx, and NYC’s social-artistic movements and aesthetic politics of place in im/migrant urban settings.

Several of her exhibitions have been featured in Artnet’s best exhibitions of the year and listed by the New York Times list of 10 Galleries to Visit Now on the Lower East Side. In 2020 she became the Executive Director of The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Education Center in downtown Manhattan which has seen exponential growth since 2020 and was awarded the Mellon’s Foundation grant for New Director’s Vision, as well as other community, arts, and public humanities recognitions and awards.

Guerra is a co-founder of the South Bronx Unite environmental justice coalition, serves as a member of the Mott Haven / Port Morris Community Land Stewards board, and most recently co-founded the LxNY/ Latinx Arts Consortium of New York network of 30 plus arts organizations, and Shape of Cities to Come Institute certificate and peers program in partnership with the Urban Ecologies department of the New School for Social Research. She holds a certificate from the DeVos Institute Global Arts Management Fellowship (2019-22), an M.A. from Université Laval, Quèbec, and a second M.A. from New York University.

Ron Innocent has been a key member of Denham Wolf’s project management team since 2007. Drawing upon his extensive background in facilities planning, design, and construction, Ron brings a sophisticated understanding of all aspects of the project management process to the firm and its clients.

As Managing Director of Project Management, Ron leads the Project Management team’s key initiatives, pilots new business development efforts, and provides guidance to the firm’s Project Managers. His leadership and commitment to seamless delivery of quality services allow him to advance the team’s expertise in implementing major construction projects.

Ron’s expertise and commitment to community-driven projects exemplify his work with Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI). On behalf of CCCADI, he successfully implemented the acquisition and redevelopment of a former city firehouse into an interdisciplinary cultural center. The expansion involved managing the acquisition of City-owned property, gaining public approvals for the redevelopment plan, funding from public and private sources, and achieving LEED Gold certification. Located in East Harlem on 125th Street, the firehouse is both a City and National landmark.

Ron implemented the same level of management excellence for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, where the organization opened the Diane L. Max Health Center. This new 14,000-square-foot community healthcare center in Long Island City is PPGNY’s first facility in Queens and will be utilized as a prototype for PPGNY’s other health centers around the five boroughs. Ron’s project portfolio also includes the Brownsville Multiservice Family Health Center, and the Chinese American Planning Council.

Prior to joining Denham Wolf, Ron served as Project Manager for Partners Healthcare at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston, Massachusetts. Ron is an active board member of Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy.

Series Organizers and Moderators:

Peter Zuspan is the founding principal of Bureau V Architecture (BVA), a design and architecture studio based in Brooklyn, New York. BVA and its projects have won national and international awards, including numerous AIA Awards, a nomination for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, Architectural Digest Innovators, and Curbed Groundbreakers. Its work has also been listed in the top ten arts centers in the world in 2015 by Architectural Record. BVA's clients have included the Brooklyn Public Library, National Sawdust, the Bushwick Starr, Chapter NY, Atlanta's Goat Farm Arts Center, Miami-Dade County, and numerous other institutions. The studio's work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA PS1, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Smithsonian Institute/Cooper Hewitt Museum, and many others nationally and internationally. Zuspan's research project entitled “The Performance of Shame: The Desegregation Renovations of Downtown Atlanta,” won the 2021 Arnold W. Brunner Grant for Architectural Research. Zuspan holds a Masters of Architecture and a Bachelors of Arts from Columbia University. He is a licensed architect in the states of New York and Georgia. He is also the Secretary of the Board of Directors of National Sawdust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to new music. Zuspan has also taught architecture at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse University, and the University of Kentucky. BVA is a certified LGBTBE.

Stephanie Johnson Cunningham is the Executive Director of Museum Hue. Her leadership has propelled the organization into a nationally recognized and trusted source with 400+ institutional members (museums and academic institutions) that utilize the organization as a resource to inform both practice and policies. Stephanie has been committed to taking up the charge to change museums to bring about greater attention and constant awareness of racial issues through arts and culture. She stresses that the best pedagogical strategies include the cultural capital of communities to deepen knowledge and understanding of art, history, and culture. Stephanie holds a Bachelor's degree in Art and Art History from Brooklyn College and a Masters degree in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies (CHAPS) from Rutgers University. She also received the Americans for the Arts 2019 American Express Emerging Leader Award for her work.

Sierra Van Ryck deGroot is the Deputy Director of Museum Hue. A proud alumna of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Program at Seton Hall University and Bank Street College of Education, Sierra has her B.A. in Art, Design and Interactive Media; Fine Arts; and Art History and M.S.Ed in Museum Education. A child of Guyanese immigrants, she is proudly born and raised in Central Jersey (NJ), which does exist and it is pork roll, not Taylor Ham. She is also half of the former Sierras co-presidential leadership team of the National Emerging Museum Professionals Network, a current board member for the New Jersey Association of Museums, and participating in many side quests related to advocating for change in the GLAM sector, especially in museums, around salary transparency, actionable equity in hiring practices, the abolition of unpaid internships, and the practice of rest for all museum workers.

Addison Tobias is the Programs Manager at Museum Hue. A former Schomburg Fellow at the University at Buffalo, Addison received her Master’s degree in Critical Museum Studies and Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. She proudly brings experience expanding access to museums from her work co-developing Teen Programs at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Addison has participated in the Columbia Business School’s Executive Education Museum Leadership Program and is an advocate for amplifying BIPOC voices in arts administration. Originally from Buffalo, New York, Addison was adopted into a family of art educators and has always been interested in the use of arts as a lens for communication and expression. She is committed to implementing best practices in Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion initiatives across the arts and cultural field.

Koray Duman is the principal of B-KD (Büro Koray Duman), a research-driven architecture and design studio based in New York and Istanbul. Established in 2013, the firm completed projects for American Society for Muslim Advancement, Finnish Cultural Institute NY, MoMA PS1 Museum, and artist Richard Prince. In 2016, the firm won an invited competition to design an Art and Archive Building for the Noguchi Museum. In 2017, Architizer honored B-KD as Emerging Firm of the Year for ‘its forward-thinking for the role of the architect and the desire to disrupt the stigma of the practice’. Among several recognitions, the firm received the 2017 Design Award of Excellence by Society of American Registered Architects, and 2020 & 2015 Best of the Year Awards by Architects Newspaper. The firm's work has been featured in publications like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, Surface Magazine, Cultured Magazine, Interior Design Magazine and Dwell. Koray is originally from Turkey where he earned a BArch from Middle Eastern Technical University and furthered his studies at UCLA with a Master’s degree in Architecture. He previously worked as the lead architect on several US west coast museum projects. He served as the chair of the New Practice Committee at AIA NYC CHapter, and a board member of the Clemente Center in the Lower East Side. He is on the advisory board of American Society for Muslim Advancement and ProtoCinema. He is an adjunct professor at Pratt and New School and a registered architect in New York State and Turkey.