BRIC, a major incubator and supporter of Brooklyn artists and media-makers, and the leading presenter of free cultural programming in the borough, today announced Kristina Newman-Scott as the organization’s new President. The artist, curator, and arts administrator, who since 2015 has served as Director of Culture for the State of Connecticut, assumes leadership of BRIC in September, in the midst of the organization’s 40th anniversary season.

Newman-Scott’s appointment as President of BRIC is the latest chapter in a remarkable, multifaceted career in the arts. She became an acclaimed painter while still a BFA student at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. When she moved to Connecticut in 2005, she took her first job as a curator and arts administrator—as Director of Visual Arts at Real Art Ways in Hartford. There she conceptualized, organized, and helped to secure funding for over 60 exhibitions and 50 publications, garnering attention from an array of national and international media. In 2010, she was appointed Director of Programs at the Boston Center for the Arts, where she led the management, design, implementation, and evaluation of numerous innovative programs in the fields of literature, dance, visual art, public art, theater, and education, including a small business program focused on creative businesses. She worked to ensure that all of these programs were responsive to Boston’s diverse communities.

BRIC presents Bordering the Imaginary: Art from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Their Diasporas, an exhibition of contemporary artworks using an array of media to mine the interrelated histories of two Caribbean countries that share a single island, their tradition of cultural and social exchange, and the racism and social injustices that have long impacted the people of both nations. The exhibition, sponsored by Goya, brings together Dominican and Haitian artists based in both the island and in the U.S., creating a vivid visual narrative and opportunities for discourse that reconsider differences and commonalities between the distinct but intertwined communities of these countries. Through the exhibition, accompanying catalogue, and public programs, Bordering the Imaginary investigates definitions of nationhood as it relates to these two adjacent countries whose shared border bears a brutally racialized history, yet has also managed to persist as a space of cultural fluidity and collaboration.

The acclaimed Festival brings together globe-trotting jazz legends, groundbreaking emerging jazz artists from Brooklyn and beyond, and grows in third year to include a full week of programming, much of it free. Plus performances by Maceo Parker, The Sun Ra Arkesta directed by Marshall Allen, Vijay Iyer, The Terri Lyne Carrington Band, GoGo Penguin and more.