The Hermitage Artist Retreat recently announced its 2021-2022 Curatorial Council, comprised of distinguished national arts leaders spanning the fields of theater, visual art, music, literature, and arts education. The newest additions to the Council include Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Nataki Garrett(pictured above), Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mitchell Jackson, and celebrated WQXR radio host Terrance McKnight.
Nataki Garrett is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s sixth artistic director. She previously served as a juror for the 2021 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Garrett is currently leading the charge to mobilize theater organizations across the nation to procure long-term federal government support to ensure the theater industry’s reemergence post-pandemic. Garrett’s passion is fostering and developing new work, including those that adapt and devise new ways of performing the classics. She has directed and produced the world premieres of many well-known and important playwriting voices of our time, including Katori Hall, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Dominique Morriseau and Aziza Barnes.
Mitchell S. Jackson is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. His debut novel, The Residue Years, received wide critical praise and won a Whiting Award and The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. A formerly incarcerated person, Jackson is also a social justice advocate who, as part of his outreach, visits prisons and youth facilities in the United States and abroad.
Terrance McKnight is the evening host on WQXR, an artistic advisor for the Harlem Chamber Players, and serves on the boards of the Bagby Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. He’s frequently sought out by major cultural organizations for his insight into the cultivation of diverse perspectives and voices in the cultural sphere. McKnight regularly curates concerts and talks at Merkin Concert Hall, Billie Holiday Theatre, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Museum of Modern Art.
Read full press release here.