Spring Exhibitions Curator Tour

Join us on Tuesday, June 16 for a curator-led tour of MCA Denver's spring exhibitions featuring Ana María Hernando, Sammy Seung-min Lee, and Bethany Collins, on view March 5 – July 5, 2026.

Free for Heart Club with RSVP. Discounted tickets for members.

Complimentary glass of wine for Heart Club members during the Welcome Reception in the Cafe at 6:00 PM.

About MCA's Curators

Leilani Lynch is the Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Her recently organized exhibitions include Movements Toward Freedom, Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature, Steven J. Yazzie: Meandered, and Ken Gun Min: The Lost Paradise. Prior to joining MCA Denver, Leilani most recently served as Curator at The Bass, Miami Beach. There she curated numerous solo and group exhibitions with artists including Jamilah Sabur, Cara Despain, Naama Tsabar, Mika Rottenberg, Karen Rifas, and Aaron Curry, in addition to co-organizing exhibitions with Adrián Villar Rojas, Haegue Yang, Pascale Marthine Tayou, and Paola Pivi. She holds a BA in Art History from University of California, Berkeley and an MAS in Curating from Zurich University of the Arts.

Miranda Lash is the Ellen Bruss Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Her recent accomplishments include acting as the Susan Brennan co-Artistic Director (alongside Ebony G. Patterson) of the 2024–2025 international art triennial Prospect.6 in New Orleans titled The Future is Present, The Harbinger is Home. At MCA Denver she has organized the exhibitions Deborah Jack: The Haunting of Estuaries (2025); Suki Seokyeong Kang: Mountain—Hour—Face (2025, co-organized with Leilani Lynch); Cowboy (2023, co-organized with Nora Burnett Abrams); Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe (2023); Clarissa Tossin: Falling from Earth (2022); Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lighting / Rivalizando con el relampágo (2022); and Jason Moran: Bathing the Room with Blues (2021).
In 2016 Lash and Trevor Schoonmaker co-organized the acclaimed group exhibition Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art. In 2014 Lash organized the traveling retrospective Mel Chin: Rematch. From 2008 to 2014, Lash was the founding curator of modern and contemporary art at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She currently serves on the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation and was a 2022 Fellow with the Center for Curatorial Leadership.

Leilani Lynch curated all three exhibitions on view. Miranda Lash will lead the exhibitions tour.

About the Exhibiting Artists

Ana María Hernando (b. 1959, Buenos Aires) is a Colorado-based multidisciplinary artist. She received a BFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California and a BS in Education from the Profesorado Eccleston in Buenos Aires. She was a 2023 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow. She represented Colorado in the 2024 Women to Watch exhibition at National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. In 2024, her public art project To Let the Sky Know / Dejar que el cielo sepa inaugurated the 20th-anniversary year of Madison Square Park Conservancy’s art program in New York. Ana was the winner of the 2020 Prix Henry Clews in Sculpture awarded by La Napoule Art Foundation, with a one-year residency and solo major show at their Château de La Napoule in France. She has had other recent exhibitions at Denver Botanic Gardens, CU Art Museum, MCA Denver, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Oklahoma Contemporary, Marfa Contemporary, and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work will also be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, Colorado Springs in February 2026. Hernando is represented by Robischon Gallery.

Sammy Seung-min Lee’s (b. 1975, Seoul; lives and works in Denver) work has been the subject of recent presentations at Store Namsan, Korea (2024), Emmanuel Art Gallery, CO (2021), Lakewood Cultural Center, CO (2018), and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO (2014). She has held residencies at RedLine Contemporary Art Center, CO, the Studios at Mass MoCA, MA, and Anderson Ranch, CO.

A recipient of fellowships from Joan Mitchell Foundation (2025), Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program (2023 – 24), and Colorado Creative Industries (2020), Lee also directs Collective SML | k, a Denver-based contemporary art space she founded in 2017.

Bethany Collins (b. 1984, Montgomery, Alabama) was born in Montgomery, AL and lives and works in Chicago, IL. Collins is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptual practice examines the relationship between race and language. Centering language — its biases, contradictions, and ability to simultaneously forge connections and foster violence — her works illuminate America’s past and offer insight into the development of racial and national identities. Drawing on a wide variety of documents, ranging from nineteenth-century musical scores to US Department of Justice reports, she erases, obscures, excerpts, and rewrites portions of text to bring to the fore issues revolving around race, power, and histories of violence.

Collins’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including At Sea, Seattle Art Museum, WA (2024); Accord, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, AL (2024); America: A Hymnal, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2023); and My Destiny Is In Your Hands, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, AL (2021), among others. Collins has participated in many group exhibitions including Prospect.6: The Future is Present, The Harbinger is Home, New Orleans, LA (2024);The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (2021), traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2021), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2022), and Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, CO (2022); and Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2020), traveled to Seattle Art Museum, WA (2021), and The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2021). Collins’s work is represented in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, among others. She is the recipient of many awards and grants, including the3Arts Next Level Visual Arts Award (2024); Pardon Prize (2024); Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize (2023); Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2022); and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2015), among others. Bethany Collins is represented by Alexander Gray Associates, NY and PATRON, Chicago, IL.

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