about: People

LORELEI STEWART, DIRECTOR & CHIEF CURATOR OF UIC GALLERY 400

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, Chicago, and holds a BA in economics from Smith College, a BFA in photography from the Corcoran School of Art, and MA in curatorial studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

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.