Past Institute Fellows

Studio Art: Geovanni “Geo” Barrios (b. 1999) is a musician and visual artist whose work explores the evolution of American masculinity. Originally trained as an orchestral tubist, he transitioned into performance art, developing a multidisciplinary practice that examines identity, power, and social structures through music, drawing, sculpture, and archival research. Barrios holds a BA in Art History from Yale University and has worked in arts conservation at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His experiences with historical objects and preservation techniques inform his artistic practice. As a musician, he has performed across the United States at venues such as the Ely Center for Contemporary Art, Yale Center for British Art, and Yale University Art Gallery, as well as internationally in Mexico, Brazil, and Germany.

Art History/Criticism: Kealey Boyd is a writer and art critic. She is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic and The Art Newspaper and her work is featured in the Los Angeles Times, Colorado Public Radio, Frieze, Art Papers, The Belladonna Comedy, College Art Association, Artillery Magazine, and several art catalogs and books, including this year’s Artists as Writers, published by Intellect Books as part of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series. She is a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA) and she served as an Executive Board Member for Redline Contemporary Art Center from 2018 to 2024. She earned her BA in Economics and MA in Art History from the University of Chicago. Her research interests include methodologies for interpreting painting and other visual forms as an integral element of political and cultural discourses.

Art History/Criticism: Michael Holloman, parent, artist, curator, and fine arts professor, is an enrolled member of the Colville Confederated Tribes. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Native American art history and the studio arts at Washington State University while maintaining duties as the college’s coordinator for Native Arts, Outreach and Education. His scholarship addresses the historic issues and visual record of Plateau settler colonialism and Native adaptation and self-assertion—regarding Clyfford Still, Holloman stresses the aesthetic dimension of his work as being infused with a spiritual power that sustains familial and communal memory while offering inspiration for a new generation.

Early Childhood Education: Kyong-Ah Kwon, PhD, is the Drusa B. Cable Endowed Chair and Professor at the University of Oklahoma. She is passionate about supporting young children’s learning and development in various contexts, including art museums. Her research examines how home and school environments influence early development. Dr. Kwon has secured over $6.3 million in grants, including for her nationally recognized Happy Teacher Project, which focuses on improving early childhood educators’ well-being and working conditions. She also leads the Happy Teacher Global Project in collaboration with scholars across five countries. She co-leads a national interdisciplinary group on ECE workforce well-being, serves on the steering committee for the Network for Infant Toddler Researchers, and is a guest editor for several leading journals in the field.

Social Enterprise: Marie Edland joined the Barnes Foundation in 2022 as its first Strategic Research Analyst within the inaugural Evaluation & Impact Department. She holds an MA from Bryn Mawr College in French and Francophone Studies. Prior to transitioning to the arts non-profit sector, she spent five years working in brand strategy and market research agencies. Marie supports all ongoing institutional research projects at the Barnes Foundation, including program evaluation, visitor experience surveying, and external collaborative projects. She is passionate about promoting evaluation practices, frameworks, and approaches that uplift audience perspectives and deepen connections to arts organizations.

Social Enterprise: Riley Jones, IV, is Executive Director for the Paul Robeson House and Museum and a leading voice in advocating for progressive social change. Before becoming Executive Director, Riley served on the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance Board for three years, leading development efforts that resulted in, among other things, a $1 million philanthropic gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Jones is a graduate of Columbia University (BA) and holds a MS in Education Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from New York University. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Education Leadership at Harvard University.

Social Enterprise: Emily Grace King is an artist and museum professional living and working in the Denver Metro area. While King works in a variety of mediums, her current focus is on creating encaustic monotype assemblies using beeswax from her backyard hives. The pursuit of creating her own artistic medium inspired King to learn to keep bees and led her to transform her outdoor space into a haven for pollinators, planting and cultivating the raw material the bees need to create wax for her artwork. King is the Exhibition Manager and Associate Curator at the Arvada Center. In 2016, King founded the community project Art Drop Arvada. She served her city as Chair of the Arvada Arts and Culture Commission. King is a strong advocate in the community for public art and for civic investment in local artists at all stages of their careers.

Early Childhood Education: Dr. Michael A. Barla is a Research Associate Professor in the Positive Early Learning Experiences (PELE) Center at the University of Denver. He previously worked as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the early childhood and early childhood special education licensure programs at the University of Colorado Denver. Prior to joining the faculty at CU-Denver, he was an Assistant Professor of early childhood education and special education at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, MO. Dr. Barla began his public-school career as a Speech-Language Pathologist working with children ages pre-k through high school in Illinois, Florida, and Missouri. He then moved into positions focusing on educational assessments and administration and spent the final five years of his public-school career as the Director of Early Childhood Education for the Rockwood School District in St. Louis County, MO. As the Director of ECE, Dr. Barla was responsible for the collaborative leadership of four programs in the school district: tuition-based early childhood education, early childhood special education, Parents as Teachers and screening. Dr. Barla has worked on the following grant-funded projects: EPIC-ECE (Ensuring Preparation of Inclusive Early Childhood Education by Enhancing ECE Teacher Preparation in Colorado) – University of Colorado Denver; Placed-Based Bachelor of Arts in ECE – University of Colorado Denver; and Circle Grant focused on Community Inclusion – PELE Center at the University of Denver. He holds a Doctor of Education degree in Educational Leadership from Maryville University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Early Childhood Education: Dr. Heather Kaplan is an artist, educator, and researcher who studies artmaking and early childhood art education. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Texas El Paso where the context of the U.S.-Mexico border guides her practice and understanding. She is interested in notions of play and materiality, community, contemporary artmaking practices, and storytelling. Theoretical investigations of epistemology and ontology prevail as reiterative themes in her writing, research, and pedagogical and artistic practice. Dr. Kaplan’s written scholarship has appeared in national and international research journals and edited anthologies. Her creative work has been shown broadly.

Studio Art: Sarah Faux makes paintings that embrace unabashed sensuality, autonomy and pleasure. Faux’s fluid compositions teeter on the edge of reality, revealing how much of our emotional and sensory lives take place beneath the surface. Faux’s solo exhibitions include Sweetbitter, Hales Gallery, New York, NY USA (2023); Whatever I see I swallow, M+B, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2021); Perfect for Her, Capsule Shanghai, China (2020); and Gemini, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2016), among others. She has been exhibited in many group shows, including Sim Smith, London, England (2023), Lyles & King, New York, NY, USA (2022); Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2020) and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2019). Faux has been the recipient of many residencies and grants, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2023), a Keyholder Fellowship at the Lower East Side Printshop, New York, NY, USA (2018-19), artist residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA (2017, 2012) and the Yale School of Art’s Gloucester Painting Prize, Gloucester, MA, USA (2014). Faux’s paintings have been written about in Cultured Magazine, Surface Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Modern Painters, Hyperallergic, i-D Vice and Artsy, among others. Faux holds an MFA from Yale University and a joint BA/BFA from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Kevin Appel

Studio Art: Kevin Appel has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA; ACME., Los Angeles, CA; The Suburban, Chicago, IL; Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; Wilkinson Gallery, London, United Kingdom; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. His work has been included in group exhibitions at numerous institutions including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, CA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Kunstmuseum Brandts, Odense, Denmark; Museum of Contemporary Art Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, among others. Appel’s work is held in the public collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The New York Public Library, New York, NY; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Saatchi Collection, London, United Kingdom. Appel received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York. He is a Professor of Art and currently serves as Art Department Chair at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine. Appel lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.