Meet the 2026 Second Round Jurors
Kerry Brougher
The Founding Director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, where he served as Director and CEO from 2014 to 2019. For over thirteen years, Brougher was the Chief Curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Prior to his tenure at the Hirshhorn, he served as the Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, and was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles during its pivotal early years. Widely known for creating award-winning retrospectives, projects, and thematic exhibitions focusing on film and media, Brougher currently holds the title of Chief Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
He is currently working on a major exhibition and book of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s complete movie theater photographs.
Jonathan Latiano
(2013 Baker Artist Awardee)
Jonathan Latiano received his BA in Studio Art from Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 2006 and his Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. Jonathan has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Washington, DC, and London, England, and his work has been featured in local, national, and international art publications. His artistic and teaching practices have earned him multiple honors and awards, including the 2013 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize in Art.
Jonathan maintains his studio practice in Somerville, Massachusetts, is a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery, and serves as Director of the Studio Art Program at Merrimack College.
David E. Little
The leader of David E. Little Art Consulting, LLC, which advises museums, collectors, and estates on strategy and navigating the international art world. David brings three decades of senior museum leadership experience to the panel. He previously served as the Executive Director of the International Center of Photography (ICP); John Wieland 1958 Director and Chief Curator of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College; Director of Academic and Adult Programs at The Museum of Modern Art; Associate Director and Head of Education at the Whitney Museum of American Art; and Chair of Photography and Media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Paul Rucker
(2015 Baker Artist Awardee)
Paul Rucker is a multimedia visual artist, composer, and musician. His practice often integrates live performance, original musical compositions, and visual art installation. For nearly two decades, Rucker has used his own brand of art making as a social practice, which illuminates the legacy of enslavement in America and its relationship to the current socio-political moment. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research, and basic human emotions.
Rucker has received numerous grants, awards, and residencies. He is a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship awardee, a 2012 Creative Capital grantee in visual art as well as a 2014, 2018, 2019 MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund grantee for performance. In 2015 he received a prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant as well as the Mary Sawyer Baker Award. In 2016 Paul received the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, becoming the first artist in residence at the National Museum of African American Culture
Rucker is an iCubed Arts Research Fellow and Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and Curator for Creative Collaboration for VCUarts. He is the founding and executive director of Cary Forward Museum in Richmond, VA, opening in 2026.
Amy Stolls
Amy Stolls is an author, advisor, presenter, public speaker, and former Director of Literary Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). During her 26 years at the NEA, she managed literary grants, fellowships, and national initiatives including Poetry Out Loud and the NEA Big Read, while supporting writers through partnerships, project development, and national convenings. In 2025, she received the Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry for her extraordinary work and contributions to the literary field.
Stolls is the author of the novels Palms to the Ground and The Ninth Wife, and previously taught literature and worked as an environmental journalist. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband and two teenage sons.
Shodekeh Talifero
(2011 Baker Artist Awardee)
Dominic Shodekeh Talifero is an award-winning Breath Artist based in Colorado Springs with 39 years of personal, professional and community-based experience. By establishing his living archive at Towson University Special Collections in 2021, as artistic alumni of "Voyages" at the National Aquarium and as a returning research fellow at the Presidential Library of George Washington's Mount Vernon, Shodekeh is still very connected to the East Coast in a variety of dynamic ways. During his time at Colorado College he was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities Professorship and piloted the first role as the "Anti-Racist Artist-in-Residence" in 2025.
bakerartist.org
Ideations of Potential