Marlon F. Hall
Curator of Black artists and art workers
Marlon F. Hall is an artist whose work is rooted in social practice and shaped by anthropological listening. His life’s intention is to cultivate human potential while unearthing beauty from perceived community brokenness.
As an art-making storyteller, Marlon was recently named a Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is a 2021 Tulsa Artist Fellow, and served as Visual Anthropologist and Social Media Archivist for the Greenwood Art Project. He has appeared as a subject matter expert on the CBS Gayle King Morning Show and as a producing storyteller for the Emmy Award-winning Migrant Kitchen.
His digital photography and film curation are featured in Google Arts and Culture, including a special spotlight on his exhibition linked to the Google search bar. His latest project presented one of his curated Amnesia Therapy Salon Dinners in partnership with The British Council and The Kenya Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennial.
Today, Marlon’s work is rooted in Tulsa, where he is tilling the soil with local creatives and community advocates to nourish the harvest of human possibility growing from the ashes of the 1921 Race Massacre. He serves as the Community Engagement Cultivator for the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Because memory informs imagination, his work seeks to remember who they were as Black Wall Street and imagine who they can become.
Marlon believes Tulsa is not a graveyard but a garden—a place where, although life decomposes, it moves toward the destined growth cycle of life, death, and renewal. The growth he cultivates in Tulsa harvests the resilient fruit of the human spirit—the fireproof, impenetrable legacy of Black Wall Street.
Welana Fields Queton
Curator of Native artists and art workers
Welana Queton is from the Osage, Muscogee, and Cherokee Nations. Her Osage name is Me-tsa-xe, meaning Sacred Sun, and she is a member of the Bear Clan and the Osage Zon-zo-lin District.
With over twenty years of experience working in museums and cultural collections, Welana specializes in American Indian ethnographic collections. Her work is grounded in the joy and responsibility of engaging with the cultural materials of her ancestors, ensuring they are preserved, understood, and shared with respect.
She co-curated and developed the inaugural exhibition WINIKO: Life of an Object at the First Americans Museum, which featured a landmark loan from the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian. This exhibition wove together historical narrative, Indigenous knowledge, and contemporary storytelling to honor the enduring life of cultural objects.
Expanding her artistic practice, Welana recently founded the Wahzhazhe Puppet Theatre, where she serves as Artistic Director. Through this innovative platform, she merges traditional Osage storytelling with contemporary performance, creating immersive works that celebrate Indigenous voices and reimagine cultural narratives for new generations.
Shelby Head
Curator of white artists and art workers
Shelby Head (pronouns: fluid) is known for integrating urgent social narratives into an ever-evolving visual language. Their multidisciplinary work combines material experimentation with a focus on expanding political and cultural critique.
Head’s work spans public art, gallery exhibitions, alternative spaces, and art fairs, earning them numerous awards, residencies, and fellowships, including the Tulsa Artist Fellowship Integrated Arts Award (2022–23), Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2020–22), THRIVE Powerhouse Grant in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2022), and multiple OVAC Grants (2020–22). Additional honors include the Connecticut Artist Fellowship Grant (2019), SLV Social Practice Residency with the National Endowment for the Arts (2019), Artist’s Resource Trust Grant (2017), Vermont Studio Center Residency (2019), and Jentel Residency (2018).
Recent exhibitions include Dirt Palace Storefront Window Gallery, Providence, RI (2024); Living Arts of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK (2023); Melton Gallery, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK (2022); Window Front Installation, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Tulsa, OK (2021); El Pueblo History Museum, Pueblo, CO (2020); and Cloyde Snook Gallery, Alamosa, CO (2020). lives and creates in Providence, RI.