Johanna's biography

I was born in 1966 (do the math ya'll, how old does that make me next month?) in Ithaca, New York but I grew up outside of Philadelphia. When I graduated from UPenn I said I was never coming back to Philly, but you know what they say about never saying never. I lived in New York (worked for a private art dealer), Toronto (all about a guy), Washington (went to graduate school), Miami (first museum job), Seattle (life reorganization), and Cleveland (another museum job) before moving back to Philly in 2002 (current museum job at the Institute of Contemporary Art).

I learned about the Achieving Independence Center (AIC) in 2004 when the Institute of Contemporary Art was working on an exhibition with the artist Pepón Osorio. The exhibition was based on Pepón's three-year artist's residency at Philadelphia's Department of Human Services. During the summer two AIC members, Tara and Farassa, worked with Pepón in his studio helping to fabricate one of the artworks for the exhibition. They also worked with me on interpretation and programming. Farassa's interview with Pepón appeared in the exhibition brochure and Tara assisted with the Youth Jam, a public program that featured the talents of many AIC members.

I like to work with teens and artists because I'm interested in different points of view about contemporary art and what I want to know is what art means in our lives? So I'm really excited about this project because we've got artist Zoe Strauss and teens from AIC but we're also working with video experts from the Big Picture Alliance to create a documentary. This is going to make one super amazing story!