Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle
Research Associate
Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle has worked with AK Cultural Planning since 2016, supporting market research and special projects. She has executed large-scale surveys, as well as community workshops and in-depth interviews for Oklahoma Contemporary, Marfa Contemporary, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In addition, she has worked in curatorial and research capacities at arts organizations in New York and Los Angeles, including No Longer Empty, the New Museum, and the Social and Public Art Resource Center.
Shaffer-Del Valle is also an independent curator and writer. She understands curating as an encompassing practice that incorporates exhibition-making, public engagement, and written reflection, with a particular interest in bringing marginalized narratives to the fore. She is committed to telling stories, to challenging convention, and to a social practice rooted in the relationship between the arts, the personal, and the sociopolitical. Her independent curatorial projects include Intersecting Imaginaries (NLE Curatorial Lab, South Bronx, NY, 2015), We’re Still Here (Starr Bar, Brooklyn, NY, 2016), make_place (New York Immigration Coalition, NY, NY 2016), Consejos de la Isla/Advice from the Island (Studio 106, Los Angeles, CA, 2017, and Social Objects (CTRL+SHFT Collective, Oakland, CA, 2018). She co-edited and wrote the introduction for New Body, a collection of experimental art criticism published by Wolfman Books, and has her writing published in The Interjection Calendar 004 (Montez Press, 2019) and The Keeper (New Museum, 2016). Shaffer-Del Valle has her B.A. in English and Art History from Columbia University.
Shaffer-Del Valle has her B.A. in English and Art History from Columbia University. Within the arts, she is particularly interested in research-based, interdisciplinary work that both honors histories and thinks critically about contemporary society. As an educator, she also organized and taught with Casa Experimental, an after-school experimental art program, in partnership with the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, held at the RBSCC Youth Center in Brooklyn.