about: People

LORELEI STEWART, DIRECTOR & CHIEF CURATOR

In her tenure at UIC Gallery 400 since 2000, Lorelei Stewart has organized over 45 exhibitions. Her work focuses on experimental practices and the vital role art plays in shaping civic conversations, ideas, and actions. Two new commission exhibitions she has produced have won prestigious Joyce Awards: Edgar Arceneaux: The Alchemy of Comedy…Stupid, 2006, and Adela Goldbard: The Last Judgment/El Juicio Final, 2019. She teaches in UIC’s Museum and Exhibition Studies undergraduate program and co-founded Propeller Fund, which, over a ten-year period, awarded Chicago artists roughly half a million dollars. She is Chair of the Board of Directors of Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center in Chicago and holds a BA in economics from Smith College, a BFA in photography from the Corcoran School of Art, and an MA in curatorial studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

DENNY MWAURA, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR & CURATOR

Denny Mwaura is the Assistant Director & Curator of Gallery 400, where he organizes exhibitions and programs, including Imagination Doctors (2026), Learning Together: Art Education and Community (2024-25), The Mask of Prosperity (2024), A Species of Theft (2022), and Young, Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art (2021). He was the Program Manager of the Black Arts Movement School Modality and has published on E-Flux, Frieze, New Art Examiner, and the Boston Art Review. 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 Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.