Celebrate the 12th edition of the Great Rivers Biennial (GRB) in this panel conversation with GRB artists Vaughn Terrell Davis Jr., Lauren dela Roche, and Vincent Stemmler and jurors Leslie Hewitt, Margot Norton, and Pavel Pyś. Ferring Foundation Chief Curator Dean Daderko moderates the discussion.
About the Artists
Vaughn Terrell Davis Jr. (b. 1995, St. Louis, MO) has exhibited work at Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco; Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles; Dimensions Variable, Miami; The Luminary, St. Louis; and Tripoli Gallery, Wainscott, NY, among others. In 2023, Davis created a torn flag sculpture to be hoisted outdoors at Laumeier Sculpture Park in Sappington, MO, in tandem with his solo exhibition in the museum’s gallery. Davis is an exhibiting artist for Counterpublic 2026: Coyote Time, and holds a BFA in Sculpture from Webster University in St. Louis.
Lauren dela Roche (b. 1983, Santa Rosa, CA) is the recipient of several grants and residencies, including a 2024 Joan Mitchell Center residency in New Orleans. Dela Roche is represented by Eric Firestone Gallery in New York. Her work is found in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the North Dakota Museum of Art, and the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, among others. She has resided in the Midwest since young adulthood and currently lives and works near St. Louis.
Vincent Stemmler’s (b. 1989, St. Louis, MO) most recent solo exhibition, Doom Scroll, was presented by the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, St. Louis in 2023. That same year, he was featured in Counterpublic, St. Louis’s citywide public art triennial. Stemmler holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, with a record of exhibitions spanning local, national, and international venues.
About the Jurors
Working with photography, sculpture, and site-specific installations, Leslie Hewitt addresses fluid notions of time. Oscillating between the illusionary potential of photography and the physical weight of sculpture, her compositions suggest the porosity between intimate and sociopolitical lives. A selection of recent and forthcoming exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Artists Space in New York; Project Row Houses in Houston; and LA > < ART in Los Angeles. Hewitt has held residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the American Academy in Berlin, Germany amongst others. In 2012, CAM presented a solo exhibition of her work, Sudden Glare of the Sun.
Margot Norton is Chief Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), where she leads the curatorial team and oversees the exhibition program. At BAMPFA she curated and co-curated MATRIX 283/ Gabriel Chaile (2023); MATRIX 286/Amol K. Patil (through April 2025); To Exalt the Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection (through July 2025); and the BAMPFA presentation of Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection (through April 2025). She regularly contributes to exhibition catalogues and publications and is also co-founder and current editorial council member of Museums Moving Forward, an independent, limited-life organization devoted to envisioning and creating a more just museum sector by 2030. She holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York.
Pavel Pyś is the Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy at the Walker Art Center. At the Walker, he has curated solo exhibitions by Daniel Buren, Paul Chan, Pan Daijing, Michaela Eichwald, Christine Sun Kim, Carolyn Lazard, Ralph Lemon & Kevin Beasley, Sarah Michelson, and Elizabeth Price, as well as the group exhibition The Body Electric (2019). In 2018, he was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship which aided research towards Multiple Realities: Experimental Art from the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-80s, presented at the Walker, Phoenix Art Museum and Vancouver Art Gallery. Pyś is closely involved in leading the strategic vision, development, and long-range planning of the Walker’s collection. In 2025, he was awarded a Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellowship. Pyś received an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College in 2010 and an MSc in Culture & Society from the London School of Economics in 2009.
