Mentorship Matters
Learn how relationships sustain creative lives and careers in the arts—from the perspective of the mentor, the institution, and the artist
What helps cultural workers and artists not only develop their practice, but also sustain meaningful, impactful careers over time? Relationships.
Join acclaimed arts journalist, educator, and longtime mentor Robin Cembalest for a conversation with Pen + Brush Executive Director and Chief Curator Dawn Delikat and photographer Christine L. Mace to discuss how mentorship, advocacy, and community fuel creative lives and careers.
Drawing from decades of mentoring artists, writers, students, and cultural workers, Robin will share practical insights into navigating today’s creative landscape, including the dos and don’ts of seeking mentorship, building authentic professional relationships, communicating effectively, and recognizing opportunities for long-term growth. Together, the panel will examine mentorship from three interconnected perspectives: the mentor who guides and champions others, the institution that creates pathways and opens doors, and the artist who both learns from others–and, in turn, mentors communities through creative practice.
Whether you are an artist, student, educator, curator, arts administrator, or cultural worker, this conversation offers practical advice, thoughtful reflection, and a deeper understanding of how meaningful mentorship can strengthen careers, creative communities, and the cultural landscape itself.
Following the discussion, guests are invited to stay for casual drinks with artist Christine L. Mace and experience her exhibition Through the Lens, currently on view at Pen + Brush.
The show features Mace’s photographs documenting her experience during her residency last spring conducted through the Disabled People’s Organization of Bhutan. Mace, a self-taught social documentary photographer, her work focuses on humanizing the other and capturing fleeting moments of authentic connection among people, spaces, and places, traveled to Bhutan to collaborate with local students living with mobility challenges through a series of workshops centered on photography, storytelling, and shared creative practice. Work by several of Mace’s mentees is also on view.
ABOUT ROBIN CEMBALEST
Respected journalist, influential Instagrammer, and the former editor of ARTnews, Robin Cembalest has built a specialty in professional training for the digital era. She teaches writing, social media, public speaking, and other essential skills across the art industry.
A longtime coach and mentor, Robin founded and ran the internship program at ARTnews as well as the Niboristas, her networking club for young art professionals. She is currently a faculty member of School of Visual Arts and continues to teach and mentor at various schools and nonprofits.
As a writer and reporter, Cembalest published influential coverage on the culture wars, censorship, multiculturalism, and museum politics. These days she is also known as @rcembalest, handle of her popular Instagram chronicling her travels in the art world.
ABOUT CHRISTINE L. MACE
Christine L. Mace is a New York City-based artist with experience in fashion, film, and graphic design. As a self-taught social documentary photographer, her work focuses on humanizing the other and capturing fleeting moments of authentic connection among people, spaces, and places. Her work is deeply tied to her struggles with being put into a box and the feelings of being unseen.
In 2019, her series ‘Dominoes in Havana’ received the First Place Winner award in the Black and White Category from the jurors of the 14th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. Mace’s photography has been exhibited across the United States and internationally. Her work has been featured on LensCulture, Dodho, FotoNostrum, and Musée Magazine’s online platforms.
She has also been a part of group exhibitions at prominent venues, including FotoNostrum gallery in Barcelona, Spain, Joseph Turenne gallery in Paris, France, Pen + Brush Gallery in New York, New York and the International Center for Photography Museum. The latter hosted the ‘#ICPConcerned: Global Images for Global Crisis’ exhibition, which featured 1,000 photographs from 1,000 photographers worldwide documenting the COVID-19 pandemic, racial inequality, and social justice reform.
ABOUT DAWN DELIKAT
Dawn Delikat is the Executive Director at Pen + Brush. In her previous role as Associate Executive Director, Delikat was instrumental in working alongside her mentor, Janice Sands, to bring Pen + Brush’s historic mission to support undiscovered and up and coming women and non-binary artists and writers forward into a strategic 21st century program when Pen + Brush moved from its original location in Greenwich Village and re-launched in its expanded contemporary arts programs in the Flatiron District.
Ms. Delikat has facilitated and curated numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions with artists. Her experience includes managing Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, operating Ultra Violet’s studio in Chelsea, installing exhibitions at the Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ and working as an exhibition facilitator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She holds a graduate degree in art history with a concentration in museum studies from City College of New York and undergraduate degrees in both art history and visual arts with a focus on painting.
Ms. Delikat has worked as an adjunct professor in the fine art department at City College of New York, and Union County College in Cranford, NJ where she has juried and curated several exhibitions at the college’s gallery. She has also served as a juror for The Morris Museum’s Cache of Kinetic Art, 2018; Melissa Wolf Fine Arts online exhibition Virtual Perspective, 2012; and the Northwest Area Arts Council’s 24th National Art Show, Women’s Works, 2011.