about: People

LORELEI STEWART, DIRECTOR

Lorelei Stewart, Director of Gallery 400 since 2000, has organized over 40 exhibitions, including the Joyce Award-winning exhibition Edgar Arceneaux: The Alchemy of Comedy …Stupid (2006). In 2002 she initiated the acclaimed At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago series, a commissioning program that encouraged Chicago area artists’ experimental practices. She holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, a BA from Smith College, and a BFA from Corcoran College of Art and Design.

DENNY MWAURA, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR & CURATOR

Denny Mwaura is the Assistant Director of Gallery 400. Exhibitions and public programs he has organized and supported include The Mask of Prosperity (2024), A Species of Theft (2022), Young, Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art (2021), and Crip* (2022) at Gallery 400; Malangatana: Mozambique Modern (2020) at the Art Institute of Chicago; and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich: Speculative Archives (2021) at Conversations at the Edge. He was the Program Manager of the Black Arts Movement School Modality and has published on E-Flux, Frieze, New Art Examiner and several catalogues. He received his MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a recipient of the Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Critical Architectural Writing, an award granted by the Dept. of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.

MARY KIRK, BUSINESS ADMINISTRATIVE ASSOCIATE

Mary Kirk is the Business Administrative Associate of Gallery 400. Kirk received her BA from the UIC School Art & Art History Department. She has a background in arts administration and has recently held a position within a West Loop gallery to support programming that amplifies the voices of underrepresented artists within the art history canon. She has also worked as a registrar within an art conservation studio and maintains a continued interest in the practice of conservation and archival methods. She has held assisting roles at renowned Chicagoland cultural museums, such as the Ukrainian National Museum & the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

INÉS ARANGO-GUINGUE, EXHIBITIONS COORDINATOR

Inés Arango-Guingue is a Colombian curator, arts administrator, and writer. With a belief in the potential of art to shift paradigms, she engages with curatorial contexts that explore non-rationality, illegibility, and community building. Growing up surrounded by syncretic magical practices, she gravitates towards epistemologies that look away from Western standards of reason and categorization. Her recent research focuses on Caribbean and South American art and philosophy that acknowledge the social power of the unknown, the opaque, and the illegible. She has curated exhibitions, led artist spaces, and directed art education projects in Colombia and the United States. She holds an M.A. in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.F.A. in Art and Cultural Projects from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.