Mallory Shotwell Bio
Mallory Shotwell is an interdisciplinary artist, independent curator, and artist professional practices consultant whose work is grounded in care, process, and the social conditions that shape contemporary artistic production. Her practice brings together exhibition-making, public programming, and artist-centered institutional work, with a sustained commitment to community-based, mission-driven arts organizations.
Shotwell is the founder and former director of Cultivate, an artist-run arts organization in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During her tenure, Cultivate supported nearly ten thousand students and more than one thousand artists through exhibitions, educational programs, and community partnerships. The organization functioned as a site for experimentation and dialogue, prioritizing access, responsiveness, and sustained engagement with artists and audiences. Her leadership at Cultivate required the integration of curatorial thinking with program development, artist support, and institutional collaboration, with particular attention to the labor and care involved in making cultural work possible.
As an independent curator, Shotwell develops exhibitions and programs that are research-driven and artist-centered. Her projects, including It Takes a Village and Embodied Homescapes, reflect an interest in interdisciplinary exchange and in how artistic practices are shaped by systems of care, labor, and belonging. Her curatorial approach emphasizes collaboration, listening, and attention to context, while remaining closely engaged with the practical and structural 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 often-invisible institutional and operational dimensions of artistic practice: organizing timelines and materials, coordinating overlapping commitments, managing professional correspondence, and supporting thoughtful decision-making around capacity and alignment. Rather than offering creative direction or coaching, her role is to help artists engage institutions with clarity, care, and reliability.
Shotwell’s interdisciplinary art practice informs both her curatorial and consulting work. Working across drawing, painting, photography, and new media, her artwork attends to intimacy, endurance, and the relationship between personal experience and collective structures. Maintaining an active studio practice allows her to approach curatorial and institutional work from the position of an artist, grounded in lived experience and an understanding of the vulnerabilities and demands of sustained practice.
Her background also includes extensive work in arts education and program design. She has developed curricula and facilitated workshops for diverse audiences, with an emphasis on cultural literacy, storytelling, and the practical conditions that support artistic inquiry over time. Across her roles, she has consistently worked at the intersection of artistic experimentation, public engagement, and organizational structure.
Shotwell is currently devoting her career to expanding her independent curatorial practice and professional practices work, with the goal of contributing to exhibitions, public programs, and research-driven initiatives within institutions that prioritize artists, community, and process. She is interested in roles and collaborations that understand exhibitions and programs as ongoing, relational practices—sites where care, rigor, and sustained attention can meaningfully shape contemporary art and its publics.