ReVision: Art and Justice

Artist, Curator and Facilitator

Bio coming soon

Chief Cultural Officer, City of Philadelphia

Valerie V. Gay (Val Gay®) is a creative and cultural leader, Certified Financial Planner®, nonprofit executive, recording and performing artist, and entrepreneur. In 2024, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker appointed her Chief Cultural Officer for the City of Philadelphia, Executive Director of Creative Philadelphia, and a member of the Mayor’s Cabinet, where she leads the City’s vision for arts, culture, and the creative economy.

For more than two decades, Val has built a career at the intersection of creativity, community, finance, and public service. Her leadership spans the corporate, nonprofit, higher education, and government sectors, including serving as Deputy Director and Chief Experience Officer at the Barnes Foundation, Executive Director of Art Sanctuary, Assistant Dean for Institutional Advancement at Temple University, and Vice President and Portfolio Manager at PNC Advisors, where she managed investment portfolios for high-net-worth individuals and family trusts.

A classically trained soprano and lifelong creative, Val is also a serial entrepreneur whose ventures center on expanding access to the arts, strengthening communities, and improving lives. Her creative work has been supported by grants from the Leeway Foundation, Black Music City, and Philadelphia Cultural Treasures.

Val received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Saint Joseph’s University and holds a Master of Music and Professional Studies Certificate in Voice Performance from Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from the University of the Arts, and completed additional study at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. She is also a proud alumna of Leadership Philadelphia.

Artist, Curator and Facilitator

Coming from a family of artists and human rights activists, Helena is most at home working at the intersection of culture and public policy. She is a collaborative social justice leader with more than 25 years of experience in philanthropy, civic engagement, narrative change, and movement building.  She is dedicated to bridging the worlds of foundations and advocacy to support artists, organizers, and communities working for policy and systems change. 

Helena has co-launched and led several start-up initiatives and today serves as Co-Director of the National Arts Policy Alliance, a new organizing initiative housed at United States Artists, dedicated to securing economic rights for artists and creative workers.  Previously, she served as Project Director for the Art for Justice Fund (A4J). Working with art collector and philanthropist Agnes Gund, multidisciplinary artists, and criminal justice advocates, she helped create a time-limited fund (2017 –2023) that leveraged art to promote policy and narrative change to end mass incarceration. Developed jointly with the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, A4J awarded over $127 million in fellowships and grants (457) to artists and advocates, leading to significant policy victories in bail, sentencing, and reentry reform, shifting prevailing narratives, and strengthening legacy organizations that continue to change lives today. 

Before that, Helena co-founded civic engagement organizations at the state level and worked with local and national leaders to promote voting rights, such as automatic voter registration in Oregon in 2015, through community-led legislative campaigns and ballot initiatives. Earlier, she served as a senior program officer at the JEHT Foundation and Open Society Foundations, where she funded organizers working to end racial inequality, promote economic justice, and seed the early movement to end mass incarceration.

Helena has a bachelor’s in social policy from Cornell University and a master’s in public affairs from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

She lives with her family in New York City.

Artist, Founder and CEO, Center for Art and Advocacy

Jesse Krimes is a multimedia artist whose work explores societal mechanisms of power and control with a focus on criminal and racial justice. While serving a six-year prison sentence he produced and smuggled out numerous bodies of work, established art programs, and co-created artist collectives. He is the Founder and Director of the Center for Art & Advocacy, the first national organization dedicated to supporting justice-impacted creatives. Krimes also successfully led a class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for charging formerly incarcerated people predatory fees after their release from prison.

Krimes won an Emmy Award for his documentary “Art and Krimes by Krimes.” This fall, Krimes has solo exhibitions opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jack Shainman Gallery. His work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and the International Red Cross Museum. He has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Pew Center, Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capitol, and Art for Justice Fund. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Kadist Foundation, Bunker Artspace, and the Agnes Gund Collection. He is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.

Artist

Mark Loughney is a formerly-incarcerated painter and draftsman from Pennsylvania whose art acts as a courier for criminal justice reform efforts nationwide. He is a recipient of the 2023 Art For Justice Fellowship and 2024 Mural Arts Reimagining Reentry Fellow. He works from his studio in Philadelphia and is expanding his Pyrrhic Defeat portrait project to include portraits of supporters of criminal justice reform.

Designer, Educator, Founder and Author

Dr. Kimberly McGlonn is a social entrepreneur, executive leader, and founder of Build It Boldly, a media and leadership development company equipping principled leaders to practice the work that shapes how they show up: for their lives, their teams, and the world they are responsible for. Build It Boldly offers tools that reimagine impact, influence, and leadership. This venture also guides leaders as to how to best move from intention to execution with morality, courage, care, and practice.

Previously, Kimberly founded Grant Blvd, becoming the first Black woman to lead a certified B Corp in the U.S. fashion industry, redefining what ethical entrepreneurship can look. Her leadership now extends into civic and cultural institutions: she serves as Vice President of Social Impact at the Fitler Club and Executive Director of the Fitler Foundation. As anchors of her civic service she serves on the Board of Directors of Mural Arts Philadelphia and Board of Trustees for the prestigious Philadelphia Award.

Dr. McGlonn is the award-winning author of "Build It Boldly: How Daring Business Leaders Can Gain Influence and Create Impact” and a three-time honoree among Philadelphia’s “150 Most Influential.” Her work challenges leaders to reject conformity, build with integrity, lead with morality, and remain open to what’s yet possible.

Artist

Mark Menjívar is a San Antonio-based artist and Associate Professor in the Interdisciplinary School for Engagement at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His art practice primarily consists of creating participatory projects while being rooted in photography, oral history, archives, and social action. He attended McLennan Community College, holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University.

Mark has engaged in projects at venues including the El Museo del Barrio, Rothko Chapel, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, FOTOFEST, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Puerto Rican Museum of Art and Culture, Sala Diaz, Contemporary at Blue Star and the Krannert Art Museum.

Founder and President, Diaspora DNA Story Center

Monica O. Montgomery, MA is a lauded and renowned cultural thought leader, in museums, public history, higher education, creative economy and arts administration. She is a doctoral candidate at Point Park University, pursuing her Ph.D in Community Engagement exploring the intersection of festivals, storytelling and community power. Over the last 20 years she has consulted with dozens of organizations, municipalities and civic entities, leading public engagement and partnerships towards ecologies of promise.

As an independent curator, she has produced social change exhibits and participatory experiences with institutions such as the The Formerly Incarcerated Renaissance Museum, Smithsonian Institution Arts & Industries Building, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, South African Embassy, T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, Weeksville Heritage Center and the Brooklyn Museum among others.

She is a sought-after keynote speaker and having rocked stages at TedX, SXSW, American Alliance of Museums, Association of Art Museum Curators, Themed Entertainment Association, Visitor Experience Conference, Museum Next and more, sharing her bold ideas and insights on topics such as diaspora storytelling, shared authority and engagement strategies. Notably she has shared stages with FLOTUS Jill Biden and Artist Theater Gates and has been featured in media appearances on major networks: CBS, NBC, Fox, C-Span, PBS Newshour, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, Humans of New York, Watch The Yard, Hyperallergic, and Radio One.

She stewards The Montgomery Collection™, an archive of global majority diasporic, history, ephemera, photos, antiquarian books, family papers and art which she is transforming into - DiasporaDNA Story Center™.

Director of Adult Education at the Barnes Foundation

Bio coming soon

Executive Director, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens

Emily Smith is the Executive Director of Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens (PMG), an arts organization that preserves and manages three art environment sites in Philadelphia (The Magic Gardens Museum, The Magic Gardens Studio, and The Magic Gardens Residency). These artistic masterpieces were created over many decades by artists Isaiah & Julia Zagar. Under Emily’s leadership, PMG has transformed these sites into one-of-a-kind destinations that challenge and create deeper dialogue with the world around us.  

Since becoming the Executive Director in 2014, Emily and her team increased attendance 100%, tripled the operating budget, and increased staffing to 22 people. She has made PMG a place for local and international artists to showcase work that moves beyond creative norms and the traditions of art history. In 2016 she partnered with Julia Zagar to implement a residency program that supports female artists working in traditions of folk art, particularly in Mexico. The residency continues today.  

Having worked alongside the Zagars for 17 years, Emily continues the family legacy of working through mental health struggles, championing art environments and the artists who created them, and collaboration with folk artists throughout the world. She is a member of PMG’s preservation team and a founding member of the Artist-Built Environment Network, a nonprofit that advocates for the preservation of unique artist-built sites in America and beyond.  

Emily is also a working artist. Her solo exhibitions Messy Womenand When A Man Decides To Hurt You were shown at Paradigm Gallery. Messy Women discussed society’s gender norms and When A Man Decides To Hurt You was a self-portrait series exploring her experience of violence. She is the recipient of a Leeway Foundation Art & Change grant which supported her exhibition In Visible Skin: Portraits of Transgender Philadelphia. 

At PMG, Emily has been champion of LGBTQ + and immigrant rights and has worked to make the Magic Gardens a place for all. She is passionate about mental health advocacy and the power of art in transforming lives.  

Artist and Curator

Daniel Tucker is an arts leader who helps artists, activists and organizations to create impactful work. He has been sought out for the last two decades as a curatorial, programming and editorial consultant for a range of organizations across the country. As a curator his exhibitions have toured nationally and internationally and he recently developed the Curating Engagement Retreat with support of Wagner Foundation and Public Trust. “Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic” (Soberscove, 2022), his last co-authored book with Anthony Romero and Dan S. Wang, was picked as a “Best Art Book of 2022” by Hyperallergic. Tucker is the chair of the international Arts in Society Research Network, has led graduate programs in museum studies and socially-engaged art for the last decade and is currently a fellow with the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania and the Engaged Humanities Studio at Swarthmore College with Paloma Checa-Gismero. Since 2023 he has organized the ongoing Eco-Social Salon, Site-Seeing, and Screening Series in Philadelphia where he lives with his family. 

State Legislative Affairs Manager, FAMM

Bryan Widenhouse was given a life without parole sentence when he was 17 years old. During his incarceration he accepted accountability for the harm he caused and chose to serve the community and better himself.

Bryan has developed and managed national award-winning projects and programs. He served five terms as president of the prison’s chapter of the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. In each of those terms they were named the #1 chapter in the nation. Within this organization he also served two years as a state level program manager. In 2005 he received the organization’s highest award, the Junior Chamber International Senatorship.

In other areas of service Bryan was an Alternatives to Violence facilitator, a Red Cross instructor, and a peer counselor. He successfully authored a grant to fund a prison art class and helped to develop a victim/offender mediation program. He has obtained three vocational degrees.

After the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed life without parole sentences for juveniles, Bryan was granted parole in November 2020, after serving 31 years of incarceration. Shortly after his release he joined the National Life Without Parole Leadership Council with Human Rights Watch. The Council progressively works toward the abolishment of LWOP sentences and advocates for second look agendas. He has spoken to members of Congress, testified to legislators, and helped to develop a Speakers’ Bureau to use his voice and experiences to change the narrative of extreme sentences.

In March 2023, Bryan joined FAMM as a policy associate. Today he is a State Legislative Affairs Manager on oversees FAMM’s policy initiatives in six states.