Citizen Artist Fellows
Program Name
"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."
-President John F. Kennedy, Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963
About the Program
The Kennedy Center, a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, honors our 35th President everyday by uplifting ideals from his legacy (service, justice, freedom, courage, and gratitude) that live through the arts. As part of this celebration of legacy, the Kennedy Center launched the "Citizen Artist Fellow Recognition" in 2016, which celebrates emerging artists across the country who utilize their art form for positive impact on communities.
Through the Citizen Artists Fellows program, the Kennedy Center uplifts citizen artistry, providing selected fellows with customized resources and support to advance their work. During their year-long engagement, Citizen Artist Fellows develop and strengthen connections in their fields, receive opportunities for artistic collaboration and presentation, and gain access to Kennedy Center Staff and Artistic Partners for individual professional development. In return, the Citizen Artists enrich the Kennedy Center community, helping us understand broader issues, reach new audiences, and learn through the power of their art.
Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellows represent the overall diversity of the national audience the Kennedy Center strives to reflect and serve.
Selected Citizen Artist Fellows will...
- Attend, present, and participate in Kennedy Center’s annual Arts Summits, designed to bring thought leaders from the arts and related fields together for conversation and connection
- Collaborate, share practices, and receive mentorship at the Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow Retreat
- Regularly connect on conference calls with each other and Kennedy Center staff
- Have access to consultations and personalized coaching from staff across the organization, including fundraising experts, marketing professionals, and genre/subject matter experts.
- Receive opportunities and information regarding national convenings, grant applications, and other resources from top partners such as Aspen Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, ArtChangeUS, and Citizen University
Most of the fellowship takes place in the fellows’ home community, with frequent phone consultations with Kennedy Center staff and occasional in-person meetings at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. All transportation and housing for Arts Summits and Summer Retreat will be provided by Kennedy Center. Nominees must be available to attend both Arts Summits and the Summer Retreat in order to receive the recognition.
Meet the 2020-2021 Citizen Artists Fellows
Damon Davis
Damon Davis is an award-winning post-disciplinary artist who works and resides in St. Louis, Missouri. His work spans across illustration, painting, printmaking, music, film, and public art. His solo exhibition, Darker Gods in the Garden of Low Hanging Heavens premiered in St. Louis in 2018, later traveling to Art Basel Miami 2018. Davis has work in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts and the San Diego Contemporary Museum of Art. For the documentary short A Story To Tell (2013), which profiled Davis, his work, and the creative process, Davis won an Emmy Award Mid-America for Best Short Form Program. His work has been nominated for Critics’ Choice Award, Gotham Award, and NAACP Image Award; Filmmaker Magazine selected him and Director Sabaah Folayan for their “25 New Faces of Independent Film 2016” for their work on critically acclaimed documentary Whose Streets?, chronicling the Ferguson rebellion of 2014. Davis is a 2015 Firelight Media Fellow, a 2016 Sundance Music and Sound Design Lab Fellow, a TED Fellow (2017), and a Root100 Honoree (2017).
Liss LaFleur
Liss LaFleur (she/her/hir) is an American artist, educator, and activist. Through interdisciplinary arts-based research, she explores queer identity and the future of feminism. Her work has been widely exhibited and screened, including at: the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; SXSW; on PBS/ POV Digital; the Reykjavik Art Museum, IS; TATE Modern, UK; Galeria de Arte, Santiago, Chile; the Hearst Museum at Berkeley University; the Museum of Glass, US; and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, South Korea.
LaFleur has received awards and fellowships from the John F. Kennedy Center, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the College Art Association, and the Ford Foundation. She has been a finalist for the Foundwork Art Prize (2019), Art Prize (2017), the Aesthetica Art Prize (2018), the Lumen Prize (2016), and a Webby Award (2019). In 2020, her work was acquired into the #MeToo Digital Media Collection at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard. LaFleur earned an MFA as an Arts Fellow from Emerson College in Boston, MA and is currently an Associate Professor of New Media Art at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX. She is currently represented by Galleri Urbane Marfa + Dallas.
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Ana Masacote
Ana Masacote is an award-winning Afro-Latin dance artist and performing arts curator who loves engineering spaces for community connection and conversation through the arts. She has spread the salsa bug to more than 30 countries and is the founder of Dance to Power, an online Afro-Latin dance academy. Through her social impact initiatives, Ana advocates for LGBTQ inclusivity and gender and racial equity in the arts. In 2017, she helped establish a scholarship initiative for Latinx MA artists as former executive director of Yo Soy LOLA, a movement to reclaim the Latina narrative through artistic platforms. Ana holds a BS in Management Science from MIT. Award highlights include: 2022 MCC Artist Fellow, 2020/21 Kennedy Citizens Fellow Artist, 2019 YWCA Cambridge Woman of the Year, 2019 WBUR Artery 25, and the 2014 SBA’s MA Minority-Owned Business of the Year Award.
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Anthony Torres
Anthony Torres is a writer, performer, and Executive Director of Combat Hippies, an ensemble of Puerto Rican military veteran performing artists based in Miami, Florida. A grandchild of Puerto Rican immigrants, Anthony was born in New York City and raised in Utica, New York. Following high school, he enlisted into the military and later deployed to Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq where he provided mental health treatment to deployed troops, coalition forces, and Iraqi detainees. The Combat Hippies was founded in 2015 during a veterans creating writing workshop created by MDC Live Arts and led by renown theater artist and director Teo Castellanos. Their latest and most ambitious project, AMAL, premiered during MDC Live Arts 2018/19 season and is touring nationally. AMAL explores the quest for meaning, purpose, and identity sought through enlisting in the military and shares the unifying experiences of both combatants and noncombatants as people of color. This all-Puerto Rican theater company places Puerto Rico’s colonial status, cultural, and military heritage center stage. Anthony holds a MS in Psychology from Carlos Albizu University and a Master’s degree in Social Work from Barry University.
Beatrice Thomas
Beatrice Thomas, director of Authentic Arts & Media, is a national multi-disciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and creative producer. Whether through creative production, consulting or equity, diversity, and inclusion workshops, Mx. Thomas' focus is on uplifting and centering queer, transgender, and POC voices, with special attention to creating queer-inclusive family programming. They are a pillar of Drag Queen Story Hour, serving as director of the SF Bay Area chapter, on the Leadership Team for the national organization, and as a featured drag queen. Beatrice’s work has illuminated the audiences of the deYoung Museum, SF PRIDE Mainstage, CounterPulse, SomArts Cultural Center and KALW Radio, and has shown in galleries across the United States. Currently, they serve on the national board of directors for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.
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Yancy Villa is a socially engaged artist and civic design consultant who seeks to create awareness, engage in conversation, and encourage action on issues of social justice, equity, and community prosperity.
Having lived in third world countries and working in underserved communities in Memphis led Yancy to integrate public art, creative practices, and community planning, with a focus on neighborhood revitalization. She created Go Engage Memphis Soul (GEMS), an asset-based social practice and consultancy that works in urban planning and placemaking using art with a social equity approach while celebrating unity, diversity, and inclusion.
Her work appears in diverse forms ranging from visual art to artivism to performing art to urban planning and has been recognized by grants and commissions from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, UnidosUS, Smithsonian Latino Center, Tennessee Arts Commission, City of Memphis, UrbanArt Commission, and ArtsMemphis among others. Selected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Villa is a Mexican-American artist developing binational art initiatives for public diplomacy.
Her formal education is from Christian Brothers University and Memphis College of Art with a B.A. in Psychology, a B.F.A. in Studio Art, and an M.B.A. She holds certificates from the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts as a Creative Catalyst, UrbanArts Commission Institute at the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, MO, and the Advocacy Leadership Institute of National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures in Washington, D.C.
She serves on boards and committees of organizations, including Overton Park Conservancy, Building Memphis, ArtsMemphis, The Brooks Museum, Latino Memphis, and the LeBonheur Children’s Hospital. She is a member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures and the International Association of Art U.S.A.
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Marvin K. White, MDiv, is currently the Full-time Minister of Celebration at GLIDE Memorial Church in San Francisco. He is a graduate of The Pacific School of Religion, and a 2019 YBCA 100 award recipient. He is the author of four collections of poetry: Our Name Be Witness; Status; and the two Lammy-nominated collections last rights and nothin’ ugly fly. He is articulating a vision of social, prophetic and creative justice through his work as a poet, artist, arts organizer, teacher, collaborator, preacher, cake baker, and Facebook Statustician.
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Do you know a Citizen Artist?
Through a year-long engagement with the Kennedy Center, Citizen Artist Fellows develop and strengthen connections in their fields, receive opportunities for artistic collaboration and presentation, and gain access to Kennedy Center Staff and Artistic Partners for individual professional development. Our intention is that this Recognition Program takes Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellows on a journey of investigation, activation, and participation.
Nominations will resume in 2022
Arts Summit
Arts Summit
èßäAVArts Summit is an annual one-day convening to investigate the power and potential of the arts. Bringing together thought leaders for conversation and connection, the Arts Summit engages experts from across numerous fields, aiming to challenge old ideas, spark new ones, and catalyze potent partnerships across disciplines.
Major support is provided by
Kennedy Center Education
The Vice President of Education is generously endowed by the
Generous support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Education.
Gifts and grants to educational programs at the Kennedy Center are provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Bank of America; Capital One; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Ednah Root Foundation; Harman Family Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; the Kimsey Endowment; The Kiplinger Foundation; Laird Norton Family Foundation; Lois and Richard England Family Foundation; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; The Markow Totevy Foundation; Dr. Gerald and Paula McNichols Foundation; The Morningstar Foundation; Myra and Leura Younker Endowment Fund; The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives;
Prince Charitable Trusts; Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A. J. Stolwijk; Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund; The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates; The Victory Foundation; The Volgenau Foundation; Volkswagen Group of America; Jackie Washington; GRoW @ Annenberg and Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family; Wells Fargo; and generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas. Additional support is provided by the National Committee for the Performing Arts..
The content of these programs may have been developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education but does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education. You should not assume endorsement by the federal government.