Advisory Board
Raymond J. McGuire
Co-Chair
Victoria Rogers
Co-Chair
Patricia A. Banks
Darrianne P. Christian
Denise B. Gardner
Thelma Golden
Edward Greene
Nickol R. Hackett
AC Hudgins
Rashid Johnson
Pamela J. Joyner
Alison Leland
Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Emeritus
Staff
Brooke Minto
Executive Director
Samantha Fleurinor
Deirdre Harkins
Research & Data Fellow
Brooke Minto (she/her), Executive Director
brooke@blacktrusteealliance.org
Brooke A. Minto is an arts administrator, art historian, and educator with twenty years of experience working for museums and interdisciplinary arts organizations in the United States and abroad. As the inaugural Executive Director of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, Brooke is cultivating BTA’s membership and overseeing the initiation of its key mission components.
Previously, Ms. Minto held senior leadership roles at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; at the New Museum in New York; the New Orleans Museum of Art; and, Pérez Art Museum Miami. She began her career in the curatorial department of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
A graduate of Dartmouth College, Minto studied art history, and earned a master’s degree in Modern Art and Critical Studies from Columbia University. She is a member of the Board of Advisors for the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth.
Deirdre Harkins (she/her), Research & Data Fellow
deirdre@blacktrusteealliance.org
Deirdre Harkins is the inaugural research and data fellow for the Black Trustees Alliance for Art Museums (BTA) and will be working with the Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums team at Ithaka S+R on the Art Museum Trustee Survey and several other art and culture projects over the next year. Prior to this position, Deirdre was a research assistant for New York University’s Immigrant City Project, and a curatorial intern for the Northwest Coast Hall at the American Museum of Natural History. Both experiences helped to expand her interest in researching how marginalized groups have been silenced in cultural spaces, through revising how these groups are portrayed in history. In 2019, Deirdre presented her research on Japanese migration to Argentina at the NYU Shanghai Global Asia Conference. Her overall research interests have revolved primarily around that of race, ethnicity, identity, and migration. Deirdre holds a master’s degree in world history and a bachelor’s in anthropology and linguistics, both from New York University, and she is currently working towards a Master’s of Arts in museum studies from The City University of New York School of Professional Studies.
Samantha Fleurinor (she/her), Program Manager
samantha@blacktrusteealliance.org
As program manager for the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, Samantha Fleurinor coordinates programming, manages communications with members and institutional partners, and leads the organization’s core administrative operations. Prior to joining BTA, Samantha served as the program manager for community and campus partnerships at the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University.
Samantha co-creates spaces where people can make and enjoy connections, exchange knowledge, and imagine a better world. In her work, Samantha uses design thinking methods and social justice frameworks to tackle social problems and support sustainable, equitable solutions for communities. As past chair of the planning committee for the Tulane Black Arts Festival, featuring local and national artists, Fleurinor coordinated marketing and communications, events, and programming; and spearheaded fundraising and community partnerships. She has a wide and diverse set of interests which include folk herbalism, art for activism, the sociology of oppression, asset-based community development, and health equity. Samantha holds a Bachelor of Science in management for finance and classical studies, and a Master of Public Health from Tulane University.