Ilaina Edison’s latest “Rulebreaker”: curator Brandi Reddick
Our CEO Ilaina Edison puts the spotlight on “rulebreakers” in her monthly HuffPost column. Last month, she spoke with craft beer brewer Teri Fahrendorf about making her own space—and space for other women—in a male-dominated industry.
This month, Ilaina interviewed curator and arts manager Brandi Reddick, responsible for bringing thought-provoking, progressive art to public places all over Miami. As Curator and Artists Manager of Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places and later Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Miami Beach, Brandi curated work such as performance artist Kembra Pfahler’s Auto Body, an exhibition by a group of “future feminists” that involved completely nude women painted in neon hues riding in Dodge muscle cars. The envelope-pushing performance, exhibited at Miami’s Art Basel in 2014, “came about amid a feeling that everything at Art Basel felt very commercial and very male,” Brandi explains.
“In public art, a lot of men are still driving things. I have often walked into a setting in which I’m the only woman in a room of 20 people,” she continues. “And because public art in Miami is so closely tied to real estate, I often work with architects, general contractors, and representatives from construction teams—rooms full of men… It remains a man’s world.”