Photograph of artist. Part of breast cancer art project, visually articulating an experience where a breast cancer patient described
their cancer as a "fog that they are lost in." Photograph by Mallory Shotwell.
Mallory Shotwell is an interdisciplinary artist, independent curator, and artist professional practices consultant, currently devoting her career to the development of exhibitions, public programs, and artist-centered institutional work.
She is the founder and former director of Cultivate, an artist-run arts organization in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Under her leadership, Cultivate supported nearly ten thousand students and more than one thousand artists through exhibitions, educational programming, and community partnerships. Her work there emphasized artist-centered process, public engagement, and the creation of spaces where dialogue, reflection, and shared experience could unfold.
Shotwell’s curatorial practice is research-driven and collaborative, with a focus on care, labor, and the social conditions under which cultural work is produced. She has curated exhibitions and programs including It Takes a Village and Embodied Homescapes, which foreground interdisciplinary exchange and invite audiences to consider the emotional, cultural, and structural dimensions of contemporary art. Across her curatorial work, she is attentive not only to conceptual framing but also to the operational realities of exhibition-making within nonprofit and civic institutions.
In parallel, Shotwell works as an artist professional practices consultant, supporting mid-career artists as they navigate exhibitions, residencies, juried opportunities, and nonprofit or civic contexts. This work focuses on the institutional and operational side of artistic practice: organizing timelines and materials, coordinating overlapping commitments, managing professional correspondence, and supporting disciplined decision-making around capacity and alignment. The emphasis is on reliability, clarity, and institutional fluency rather than coaching or creative direction.
Her interdisciplinary art practice informs both roles, grounding her work in lived experience and sustained engagement with questions of care, resilience, and connection. Her professional background spans curatorial leadership, arts education, and program design, and she has developed curricula and workshops that address cultural literacy, storytelling, and the practical realities of sustaining an artistic practice within institutional systems.
Shotwell is intentionally pivoting her career toward roles that allow her to shape exhibitions, programs, and research-driven initiatives within community-centered, mission-driven art institutions. She seeks positions where curatorial vision, operational rigor, and artist advocacy intersect, and where exhibitions and programs are understood as both cultural and structural acts.
