Liz Andrews joined the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art as Executive Director in the fall of 2021. Prior to joining the Spelman Museum, Andrews was Executive Administrator in the Director’s Office of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her curatorial projects at LACMA included The Obama Portraits Tour and Black American Portraits, an exhibition covering 200 years of portraiture. Andrews holds a B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University, a M.A. in Arts and Politics from Tisch School of Arts at NYU, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University.
Shannon Douglas Kimbro joined Spelman College Museum of Fine Art as the inaugural Museum Collections Manager in September of 2022, after over a decade of working as a conservator in both the private and public sectors. Shannon spent several years as the Painting Conservator and later the Chief Conservator for a large, privately-owned conservation and restoration firm in Denver, CO. In 2018, she returned home to Atlanta, where she served as the Conservation and Maintenance Program Manager and later the Collections and Conservation Arts Program Manager for the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
Shannon is a certified Georgia Heritage Responder and studied Paintings under esteemed conservator Dr. Roberta LaPucci at Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy. She is a member of the Heritage Emergency Response Alliance (HERA), the American Institute for Conservation (AIC), and the Southeast Regional Conservation Association (SERCA), where she previously served as vice president and is currently serving as president. In 2022, Shannon completed the Heritage Emergency and Response Training (HEART) program held at the Smithsonian Institution.
Contact: shannonkimbro@spelman.edu
Karen Comer Lowe has a passion for the arts and has experience in museums, galleries, and arts institutions for over twenty-five years. In 2017, She received the honor of “Best Curator” in Creative Loafings’ “Best of Atlanta” issue.
Karen has worked with national and internationally known artists including Hank Willis Thomas, Elizabeth Catlett, Mildred Thompson, Beverly Buchanan, Sanford Biggers, Radcliffe Bailey amongst others. She has also been featured in national publications including Artsy, Culture Type and Sugarcane Magazine.
Recently, Karen curated the first solo exhibition of Genevieve Gaignard’s art in Atlanta. The exhibit This Is America | The Unsettling Contradictions in American Identity was on view at the Atlanta Contemporary in 2022. Her position as Curator in Residence is shared with the Spelman College Museum and the AUC Collective.
Contact: karenlowe@spelman.edu
Brandi Pettijohn joined the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art as Curator of Exhibitions in the summer of 2024 focusing on engagement and education initiatives within the Spelman and Atlanta University Center community and the general public. Prior to joining the Spelman Museum, Dr. Pettijohn was a doctoral fellow with the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, and Optimism Network (DISCO) in the Literature, Media, and Communications department at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections of new media and art praxis, harm-reduction and ethical digital storytelling.
Brandi holds a B.A. & M.A. in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies from Georgia State University, and a Ph.D. in Digital Media from Georgia Institute of Technology.
Contact: brandypettijohn@spelman.edu
Chaunesti Webb-Johnson, PhD recently joined the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art as the Curator of Collections in January of 2025. Prior to joining the Spelman Museum, Webb-Johnson was the Black Feminist Theory Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. As an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and curator working at the intersection of performance, race, gender, and political economy, Webb-Johnson’s scholarship examines how Black women artists employ aesthetics to reimagine identity and belonging, claim personal pleasure, and stage processes of self-making. Her curatorial projects include Of Soil and Sky (2019), a solo exhibition of works by North Carolina artist, Claire Alexandre, curated in partnership with 21c Museum Hotel Durham and Provident1898, a co-working community nestled within the historic NC Mutual Building, a cornerstone of Durham’s Black Wall Street.
Webb-Johnson holds a BA in Communication Studies from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an MFA in Theater and Contemporary Performance from Naropa University, and a MA and PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
Contact: chaunestiwebbjohnson@spelman.edu
