Cortney Stell
Cortney Lane Stell is a curator based in Denver, Colorado. She is currently the Director of the Philip J. Steele Gallery at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in Denver, a gallery space that shows national and international contemporary art. As an independent curator, Stell has also curated numerous exhibitions in Colorado and internationally that focus on artworks experimental in both conceptual and material nature. Stells career began at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) during the build out of the new Hamilton building. At the DAM she organized programming, docent training, and events around the Modern and Contemporary collection. She was trained as an artist, holding a BFA in photography and painting from the University of Colorado Denver, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication at European Graduate School in Switzerland. Stell has organized numerous contemporary art exhibitions, including solo exhibitions featuring new work by Shirley Tse, Roger Herman, Mike and Doug Starn, Justin Cooper, Chad Person and Jimmy Joe Roche. Stell also curated the traveling exhibition Works in Passage, an exhibition of outdoors sculptures by Italian artist Maria Chrsitina Carlini. Stells writings on artists have been published in various catalogues and magazines. Her writing has recently appeared in Constantin Brancusi: In the XXI Century New Studies published by Verso LArte and the upcoming monograph on Austrian artist, Jorrit Tornquist. Alongside these activities, Stell is a guest lecturer at universities and colleges and currently teaches a course on professional practices at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design.