41st Edition · Jury Panel
Art submitted to the competition is reviewed by a rotating panel of expert jurors, each representing a different field in the art world, ensuring a fair and balanced selection process.
Hayley Ferber
Curator, Educator, Artist
Hayley Ferber is a Brooklyn-based independent curator, educator, and artist with a professional mission to support a creative community of multidisciplinary artists. She has served in the roles of Artistic & Development Director of the Pelham Art Center, Operations Director at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center and Deputy Director of Chashama.
Hayley has curated more than 20 exhibitions for institutions including Westbeth Gallery, BronxArtSpace, Residency Unlimited, SVA Residencies, All Street Gallery, 440 Gallery, Lichtundfire, and the Consulate General of Brazil in New York among others. She has visited with artists from ISCP, NARS Foundation, Kunstraum LLC and Art Cake and has contributed to jury panels for NYSCA, DCLA, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Queens Council on the Arts. Hayley holds an MAT in Art & Design Education from RISD and a BS in Studio Art from NYU.
Shlomit Dror
Curator
Shlomit Dror is an independent curator working between New York and Jerusalem. She holds an M.A. in Museum Studies from New York University and a B.A. in Art History and Latin American Studies from Bard College, and completed the Curatorial Intensive at Independent Curators International (ICI). Her independent curatorial projects have been presented at Residency Unlimited, NARS Foundation, Dorsky Gallery, the Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University, and other institutions across the United States. She has served as a visiting critic at Wave Hill Visual Arts Program, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and Residency Unlimited, among others. Her writing has appeared through CUE Art Foundation's Young Art Critics Mentoring Program, Peace News Network, and in numerous exhibition catalogs.
Dror has held curatorial positions at leading museums and nonprofit arts organizations, including Assistant to the Chief Curator of Fine Arts at the Israel Museum and exhibitions at the Newark Museum. She is also the Managing Director of Jerusalem Culture Unlimited (JCU), an organization dedicated to empowering Ethiopian-Israeli artists and creatives, working closely with Palestinian and Israeli artists from diverse backgrounds.
Sara Reisman
Curator, Educator, and Writer
Sara Reisman is a curator, educator, and writer, whose curatorial and educational engagements have focused on socially engaged art, the history of exhibition making, public art, artist books, and the intersections between art and social change. Reisman has held leadership roles in curatorial, philanthropic, and educational capacities including Chief Curator at the National Academy of Design (2021-2025), Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation (2014-2021), and Director of New York City's Percent for Art Program (2008-2014), where she managed more than 100 permanent public art commissions across New York City's five boroughs. Prior to her role with the Percent for Art program, Reisman was Associate Dean of the School of Art at the Cooper Union, and has taught art history and contemporary art at the University of Pennsylvania (2004-2005) SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design (2015), the School of Visual Arts' Curatorial Practice MA Program (2016-2026), and has been engaged as a mentor, visiting scholar in residence, and critic with several low-residency MFA programs, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Clark University. As Chief Curator at the National Academy, she organized large-scale thematic exhibitions spanning 200 years of art history, including Past as Prologue: A Historical Acknowledgment (2024-2025), which examined the role of art in U.S. nation-building; Drawing as Practice (2023); Consequences: A Parlor Game (2022); Exercises in Imagination (2023); and Sites of Impermanence (2024). Projects curated in 2026 include The Useful Life of Objects at Materials for the Arts, New York City, Rumor de la Tierra: Broken China at Q Galería, Quito, Ecuador, When Thoughts Are Free, 601Artspace, New York City, and Stephen Antonakos: Vectors of Time and Space, B&M Theocharakis Foundation, Athens, Greece.
Photo credit: Elia Alba
If you are interested in becoming a juror for the competition, please contact us at cifac@nyartcompetitions.com.