AKTIONSART

Founder

JULIA FRYETT

Julia is a cultural entrepreneur, founder, curator, producer, and civic nerd based in Seattle. She instigates entrepreneurial actions in technology, film, and the arts to enable new ideas that make creativity accessible, cultivate community engagement, and drive cultural innovation. With a collaborative spirit, Julia leverages emerging technologies, multi-platform digital strategies, and a global network of relationships to direct visionary programs and produce ambitious projects.

Julia founded Aktionsart and Black Box Festival, co-organizes Seattle Arts & Technology Meetups, serves on the Seattle Arts Commission Public Art Advisory Committee (PAAC), and is Regional Co-Chair of DukeGEN (Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network). An ardent arts advocate, she has held leadership positions on Steering Committees for Americans for the Arts and Obama’s 2008 National Arts Policy Committee. 

Previously, Julia worked in a curatorial and sales capacity at the Mugrabi Collection. Negotiating sales on the primary and secondary markets, she acquired artwork through a prominent network of dealers, artists, auction house specialists and private collectors. Additionally, she administered museum and gallery exhibitions, installations at the Core Club and Gramercy Park Hotel, and site-specific public art commissions for the Lever House Art Collection.

Julia received a BA in Literature, a BA in Public Policy Studies and Music Minor from Duke University. She focused her research on arts policy and nonprofit management through the Leadership and the Arts Program at the Duke Sanford Institute of Public Policy. More recently, she completed an MA in Film Curating from the London Consortium – a unique collaboration between London Film School, University of London, Tate, ICA and the Architectural Association. She received a certificate in Transmedia Production from TransformatLab and wrote her dissertation on multi-platform digital art production, distribution and exhibition design. Julia enjoys teaching and has mentored new media art students at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Board Member

PATRICK GEARY

Patrick Geary is an expert in corporate social responsibility and international law. Following graduation from Yale Law School, he worked at a large Wall Street law firm in London and New York servicing high-profile clients in the financial and media industries. While at the firm, he was recognized for extensive pro bono contributions and honored to receive a number of awards for his representation of non-profit organizations. He went on to work as the legal advisor for a global children’s charity, and was appointed as a CSR specialist at an international fund in 2013.

Board Member

STEPHANIE HODOR

Stephanie is a curator and advisor with over seventeen years of global experience building corporate and private art collections. With expertise in contemporary art and design, she consults for independent projects, exhibitions and private collections. 

She began her career as an Assistant in the Director's Office of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She then accepted a post as Curatorial Assistant for the seminal PaineWebber Art Collection, founded by Donald B. Marron. Stephanie remained at the collection through its acquisition by UBS in 2000, and continued as a Divisional Vice President until 2005. Her experience at UBS culminated in the exhibition, Contemporary Voices, which was the first temporary exhibition in what were then the new galleries of The Museum of Modern Art. During her tenure at PaineWebber and UBS, she also served as a curatorial assistant and project coordinator to John Szarkowski who was hired by Donald B. Marron to cultivate a photography collection following his retirement as Chief Curator of Photography at MoMA.

Stephanie presently curates a significant private family collection based in New York, where she oversees acquisitions of art and design pieces and is building a seminal feminist art collection.

Board Advisor

LINDA CASTELLANOS

Linda Castellanos is a Senior Relationship Manager with Wealth400 at Compass Bank in New York City. She has fourteen years of Private Bank experience from previous positions within Global Wealth divisions at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Bank of America. Her experience extends from emerging markets fixed income sales to assisting with client management of ultra high-net worth families in the South American region. Most recently, she continues to build and grow the art lending credit program that recognizes art as a diversification of real assets.   

Her private clients are well known art collectors and, through her bank's marketing partnership with Christie's, she strives to advance the smooth collision of art, wealth, and the cultural preservation of contemporary and modern arts. 

Mrs. Castellanos is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley and holds her M.B.A from New York University’s Stern Business School.

Board Advisor

AMY HEIBEL

Amy Heibel is vice president of technology, web and digital media at LACMA where she oversees digital strategy and directs the Art & Technology Lab, a multidisciplinary program that provides grants and in-kind support to artists to create projects that engage emerging technology.

Amy holds an undergraduate degree in multidisciplinary studies from Scripps College, and a graduate degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley. 

Board Advisor

AMANDA MCDONALD CROWLEY

A native of Australia now based in New York, Amanda is a cultural worker, curator, and facilitator who specializes in creating new media and contemporary art events and programs that encourage cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and exchange.

Amanda is currently Consultant Curator for Programs at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and 2014 Alt-w Design Informatics Curator-in-Residence with New Media Scotland developing a program around her Art/Food/Tech research for Spring 2014. Her interests are at the intersection of art, culture, technology, science and social change and also currently include virtual performance, and urban research. Amanda is also currently a Board member of the National Alliance for Media Art + Culture (NAMAC) in the USA. She has lived and worked in Australia, Germany, Finland, and the USA.

She was the Executive Director of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York City from 2005 to 2011. Eyebeam is recognized internationally as a model for collaboration and innovation in art + technology. Her contributions to the field of electronic art also include her work as executive producer for ISEA2004 (the International Symposium for Electronic Arts 2004) held in Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland, and on a cruiser ferry in the Baltic sea. In 2002, she was Associate Director of the Adelaide Festival in Australia, and in this position was also co-chair of the working group that organized the exhibition and symposium ‘conVerge: where art and science meet’. From 1995 to 2000 she was Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) where she made significant links with science and industry by developing a range of residencies for artists in settings such as science organizations, contemporary art spaces and virtual residencies online.

Board Advisor

IVAR SMEDSTAD

Ivar Smedstad studied fine arts at the San Francisco Art Institute and received his degree in performance/video in 1988. He then moved on to work with distribution and preservation of video art at Electronic Arts Intermix in New York, where he held the position as Technical Director. 

In 1992 he received a fellowship from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne where he worked as an artist in residence and lecturer in media art. 

Since year 2000 Smedstad was associate professor in the Intermedia department and institute chair at Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts. Smedstad is currently director of Atelier Nord, a media arts organization in Oslo.