Visiting Artists & Scholars

Brookes Ebetsch is the executive director of Chicago Artists Coalition. Prior to this role, she was executive director of Metropolis Performing Arts Centre and School of Performing Arts in suburban Chicago. In 2022, she was part of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Leadership Institute. Her early career at the Institute for Latino Studies focused on visual art exhibitions, documentation of Latinx art and artists, and collaborative arts projects with organizations across the US.

Before returning to non-profit arts, she was executive director of SunstoneFIT in Dallas, TX, for 12 years. She is an alumna of the Stagen Integral Leadership Program and was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studio (FLAS) fellowship to Brazil from the U.S. Department of Education. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts: photography and ceramics, a second major in Spanish, and a Masters in Nonprofit Administration from the University of Notre Dame | Mendoza School of Business.

Jack Schneider (BFA 2014) is assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where he has organized numerous exhibitions including Arthur Jafa: Works from the MCA Collection (2024–25), Atrium Project: Lotus L. Kang (2023–24), Christina Quarles (2021–22), Dan Peterman: Sulfur Cycle 2.0 (2021–22), Chicago Works: Deborah Stratman (2020), and Water After All (2019–20). Additionally, Schneider was part of the curatorial team for Nick Cave: Forothermore (2022), Martine Syms: She Mad Season One (2022), and Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago (2020), among other exhibitions at the MCA. He is also a founding co-director of Prairie, an independent exhibition space in Chicago focused on emerging and experimental artists. Schneider holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Art History from the University of Chicago.

Lola Ayisha Ogbara is a Nigerian American conceptual artist and arts manager from Chicago, Illinois. She earned a BA from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Her practice explores haptic (sub)conscious frameworks using the body form, as well as the absence of the body, to contemplate complexities of emotion, belonging, looking/seeing, labor, time, and space through clay, installations, and sonic experiments. Ogbara has exhibited in art spaces across the country, including The Luminary, Kavi Gupta, Kemper Museum, Mindy Solomon Gallery, and Kristen Lorello Gallery. She has also received residencies, fellowships, and awards from Alfred University, Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago, the Coney Family Fund, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, and many other institutions.

Ogbara, as an arts manager, is also the former curator for the South Side Community Art Center and currently serves as the University of Illinois Chicago Social Justice Initiative’s program director and gallery manager. Ogbara’s curatorial-based practice serves underrepresented artists and is committed to fostering equity and integrity in the art world. “My practice is rooted in the belief that artists deserve a platform for their expression, irrespective of societal constructs or historical biases," she says. Driven by a belief in arts advocacy, Ogbara has actively curated a number of relative exhibitions as well as participated in initiatives and programs that have cultivated inclusion with diverse narratives. She has partnered with Independent Curators International, the Chicago Architectural Biennial, the Pulitzer Art Foundation, Artadia, and more.

Ogbara continues to contribute to Chicago’s rich arts landscape, striving to create meaningful connections and facilitate transformative experiences through the power of art. She is currently based in Chicago, Illinois.