Founded in 2016 by art historian Claudia Pretelin, Instruments of Memory began as an online project documenting interviews with women in the arts. It is now a growing community that seeks to promote the work of women through in-depth conversations, exhibitions, and programming with different community partners. Our main focus is understanding the processes by which individuals and groups remember and interpret memories through contemporary art practices.
MEET THE TEAM
Claudia Pretelin (She/her)
Founder & Content Curator
Claudia Pretelin is a Mexican art historian, independent curator, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles, California. She holds a B.A. in communications and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her academic work has specialized in the fields of photo history and contemporary art. Through an interdisciplinary approach, her curatorial practice focuses on understanding the processes by which individuals and groups remember and interpret memory in its different manifestations. She has lectured in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States and has organized exhibitions and events in different art museums and art galleries including Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). She is the Founder & Curator of http://www.instrumentsofmemory.com, an online site that documents conversations with women in the arts, a community that seeks to promote the work of women from different latitudes. Through this platform, she has organized, Above And Under The Surface (2021) and Instruments of Memory (2022).
Benjamin Tucker (He/him)
Editor & Content Advisor
Benjamin Tucker is the Chief Projectionist at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, CA. At both the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, he manages a team of projectionists and regularly runs premieres, nitrate, 3-D, 70mm, and film festivals in addition to digital cinema and 35mm. He was previously a film archivist and projection manager at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. He taught film handling and repair for 13 years at the Selznick School of Film Preservation and has lectured on the topic in Mexico, Australia, and India. He has served on a film festival jury, programmed special events for a number of venues, worked as an archivist for the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and is a contributor to The Art of Film Projection, a book published by the George Eastman Museum in the Fall of 2019.
Sarah E. Webb (She/her)
Contributing Writer
Sarah E. Webb’s path consists of many stitches, but at heart, she is a storyteller. From the artist studio to the yoga studio, her multi-disciplinary approach considers both spaces as creative sites of corporeal process and practice. As a writer and a teacher, she weaves her critical, visual, and perceptual background into a unique environment to map and make meaning of one’s individual body stories and experiences: from breath to pen, mat to page.
Webb is the co-editor of Singular Women: Writing the Artist, UC Press (2003) and was a member of the 2021 Listen To Your Mother cast, Rochester, NY. She received her MFA from Visual Studies Workshop, and is completing her CPA in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University. Webb teaches at the University of Rochester and facilitates writing and meditation retreats on Monhegan Island, ME. Personal Website: sewmanystories.com
Gabrielle Garcia Steib
Translator
Gabrielle is an archivist, filmmaker and photographer from New Orleans frequenting Nicaragua and Mexico. She is interested in ways in which Latin America is connected with the deep south, specifically ways in which collective memory and images are used to communicate in political landscapes.
Gabrielle holds a B.A. in English and Digital Media from Loyola University. Her work has been exhibited at NOMA, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and Museo de la Ciudad and Los 14 in Mexico City. Her films have been screened at New Orleans Film Festival, Taxco International Film Festival, and Baja California International Film Festival. In 2019 she participated in residencies at the UnionDocs, Joan Mitchell Center, and Antenna. She has written and translated for various magazines including Terremoto Magazine, and Antigravity Magazine where she started the first bilingual column about the Latinx community in New Orleans.