Dessane Lopez Cassell is a curator, writer, and editor based in New York. Born and (mostly) raised in New York City, her research interests include contemporary art, experimental film, and artist’s moving image from the Caribbean and African diasporas and beyond. Her writing and curatorial projects often examine contemporary practices that draw upon the archival, as well as meditations upon race, gender, and representation.
Cassell has organized curatorial projects, programs, and screenings for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Flaherty NYC, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum, among others. Her writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, Film Comment, and in catalogues issued by the Whitney Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and MoMA, as well as elsewhere. Cassell is a former U.S. Fulbright Fellow (to South Africa) and has received awards and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, CUNY Graduate Center, and Oberlin College. She sits on the Advisory Committee at UnionDocs—a center for documentary arts in Brooklyn—and has produced podcast and radio projects for Roskilde Festival (Denmark), and Bay FM and Creative X (both South Africa).
Cassell chairs the experimental film subcommittee for BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia and currently serves as Editor of Reviews at Hyperallergic.