Susan Thompson Textile / Mixed Media Artist and Art Educator  

Susan Thompson is a textile, fiber and mixed media artist who lives and works primarily in the Greater Boston area. At Hunter College of the City of New York, she became interested in African American History and the visual arts. Her concern for the development of mutually supportive relationships between African American artists and their communities led her to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she was a Research Associate in the Community Fellows Program.   Ms. Thompson has exhibited widely in Massachusetts and other parts of the United States. She has participated in cultural exchanges in Haiti, Cuba, People’s Republic of China, Japan and with Native American artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work reflects the diverse cultural influences that she has encountered in her travels abroad in her own cultural heritage. Through fabric, she creates unique designs, which sometimes tell stories that communicate the struggle and soul of her people.   Susan Thompson has created public art for the MBTA Orange Line, the Parks Department, the Harriet Tubman House, the Afro-American Museum, schools and other organizations. She is currently an artist-in-residence in the African American Master Artist in Residence Program at Northeastern University. She recently retired her position as a art instructor in the Artful Adventures Program, Museum of Fine Arts Boston but continues to teach part-time at Paige Academy, a private school in Roxbury who run the school based on the seven principles of Kwanza.  

Gloretta Baynes

Gloretta Baynes is a Cambridge native and an Alumna of Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is an independent curator and consultant for “ Violence Transformed”, and the former Chair and Director for the African American Master Artist in Residency Program ( AAMARP) at Northeastern University.   She is the former Assistant Director/ Registrar for the Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists, and past chair for the Registrar’s Committee for the Association of African American Museums (AAAM). Gloretta is the Associate Curator for Sequential Art , The Next Step, Exhibition created by Rob Stull, toured to several museum venues. She was also the exhibition designer for “Community Creations” highlighting artworks by 7 youth partnerships with the Gardner Museum. Gloretta’s past awards include : Polly Thayer Starr Visiting Studio Artist ( Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) Creative Entrepreneur Fellowship (CEF- Arts and Business Council) She is listed in the Saint James Guide to Black Artists, and the Private Show Issue of the International Review of African American Art. She has created commissioned works for the Boston and Waltham Children’s Hospital, The Cooper House, Say Brother, and Harvard/Radcliff Black Student Association. Her works are in private collections as well as the Museum of the National Center of Afro- American Artists in Boston.