Jose Gibran Villalobos

J. Gibran Villalobos (he/him) is an arts administrator, curator, and educator focused on civic engagement and cultural policy. He previously served as senior program officer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). He has held post as assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, public programs and partnerships manager for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, cultural liaison for the Chicago Park District, and curator-in-residence for the Chicago Cultural Center, and collections and exhibitions manager at the Department of Public Art in Glendale, Arizona.

In 2016 he attended the NALAC Advocacy Leadership Institute and was invited to the White House Office of Public Engagement, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to speak to issues affecting Latinos in Chicago. In 2017 he launched an inaugural summit of Latinx artists and administrators across the U.S; for this project he was awarded the Act Up Award by the Chicago Community Trust. His work has been presented at the Fabrica de Arte Cubano during the 2017 Havana Biennial. In 2019 he was an inaugural recipient of the Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago Award as well as the Americans for the Arts 2019 Leaders of Color Fellowship.

In 2020 he was accepted to the Civic Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy where he worked with government and nonprofit sector participants to think about effective policy for Chicago’s cultural industries. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Arts Administration & Policy.

He has contributed to exhibitions such as Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power, presenting the artwork of Chicago artistic collectives and their relation to language and civic engagement. In 2019 he produced Common Exchange, an international convening, that brought together the Tate Modern, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Queens Museum, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, and other institutions to create dialogue on civic engagement within contemporary art institutions.

During the challenging times of the COVID pandemic, his focus turned to how artists, scholars, and policymakers champion ecofeminism, architecture and water. In the two-day symposium Fractures: Creating Around Devastation contributors led discussions, performances, and livestreamed from various sites as throughline in the relationship between active practitioners and civic activity.

Gibran has written catalog entries for Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Rodrigo Lara Zendejas, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford. In 2015 he curated Orients, Greg Bae's inaugural Chicago exhibition after his year long residency in Seoul. He contributed to the first retrospective on the work by artist Andrea Bowers focusing on the activism and archives from the grassroots coalition Centro Sin Fronteras. He has been a juror for the Chicago International Film Festival Out-Look series and been in conversation with artists and filmmakers. He has served as the 2022–2024 curator for the Low Residency MFA Graduate Exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Gibran currently serves as chair of the board of directors of the Chicago Artists Coalition, and previous founding member of the auxiliary board of the National Museum of Mexican Art. He holds a BA in Art History and a BS in Public Relations from Northern Arizona University and an MA in Arts Administration & Policy and MA in Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Civic Leadership Academy Fellow, Harris School of Policy, University of Chicago; Marion Kryczka Excellence in Teaching Award, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Field Foundation, 2019 Leaders for a New Chicago; Americans for the Arts Fellows of Color; Act Up Award, Chicago Community Trust; Propeller Grant Recipient September; Advocacy Leadership Institute Fellow, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture; SAIC Faculty Enrichment Grant; University of Chicago Office of Civic Engagement Americans for the Arts Advocate