Art Advisory Board

Myrtis Bedolla

Chair, Art Advisory Board

Myrtis Bedolla has more than 20 years of experience as an advisor to private and institutional collectors on the acquisition and sale of fine art. Currently she is founding director of Galerie Myrtis, a contemporary fine art gallery located in Baltimore, Maryland. She also provides professional curatorial services, lectures, and educational programming to corporate, civic, and arts organizations and serves as cultural liaison for the embassies of Ghana, Haiti, Mali, Republic of Georgia, and Zimbabwe. As a writer, she contributes to the International Review of African American Art, Valentine Magazine, and the online newsletter ARTINFO.

Bedolla serves on the Art Advisory Board of UMGC, the Board of Directors for the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, and the Executive Board for the Station North Arts and Entertainment District of Baltimore, Maryland. She is also a member of ArtTable, a national organization for professional women in the visual arts, and sits on committees at various institutions, including the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Walters Art Museum, the Open Society Institute of Baltimore, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

Bedolla holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from UMGC and received her curatorial training at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.

Schroeder Cherry, EdD

Vice Chair, Art Advisory Board

Working artist and museum educator Schroeder Cherry is an associate for Clear Writing Services, which provides grant development and technical/scientific writing services to colleges, universities, hospitals, and organizations. As an adjunct professor at Morgan State University, he develops and facilitates courses for graduate students in the interdisciplinary museum studies program.

Cherry uses very different forms of art to create open-ended stories about African American history and culture. He uses acrylic paint and mixed media on wood, found objects, and text to construct stories, and he creates puppets and performs original shows with them in museums, libraries, and cultural centers for adults and children alike. 

He holds an EdD in Museum Education from Columbia University, New York, New York; an MAT in Museum Education from the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.; and a BFA in Painting and Puppetry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Joan Bevelaqua

Joan Bevelaqua has been teaching studio art courses at University of Maryland Global Campus since 2000. Working with the administration, she has been a principle in developing the current curriculum and is the author of the online drawing and painting courses.

Bevelaqua has held teaching positions, juried art exhibitions, and directed several galleries. She also has served as president of the Watermark Gallery in Baltimore; director of the Galleries at Savage Mill and the Mill River Gallery at Oella Mill; and member of the Board of Directors for Foundry Street Studios and Gallery in Savage, all in Maryland.

Her work with Eric Key, director of UMGC's Arts Program, inspired the recurring Faculty Art Invitational Exhibition, which showcases work by faculty of UMGC and the Maryland University Consortium institutions.

She paints in her studio at the Howard County Center for the Arts in Ellicott City, Maryland.

James "Buzz" Cusack, Jr.

James "Buzz" Cusack Jr. is the owner and president of two premier historic Baltimore movie theatres, the Charles Theatre and the Senator Theatre. In 1993, he was approached by his nephew, the assistant manager of the Charles Theatre, one of the city's first-run art movie houses, who told him that the theatre was about to close. Cusack, a fan of independent films rather than the traditional big studio movies, felt that losing the theatre would be a cultural loss to the city of Baltimore, so he renegotiated the lease and reopened the theatre in 1994. In 2012, he and his daughter, Kathleen Lyon, acquired another historic theatre in Baltimore, the Senator, and have restored it to its original art deco style. Cusack was named an Influential Marylander by the Daily Record in 2011 and 2014, an award honoring those who have made significant impacts in their field and who continue to be leaders in Maryland. Cusack graduated from the University of Baltimore in 1965. He is married to Nancy Cusack and lives in Baltimore.

Seble Dawit

Seble Dawit is director and associate professor of peace studies at Goucher College in Baltimore. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from Howard University and master's degree in international human rights law from Essex University in the United Kingdom. She lectures in peace theory, international social movements, and human rights.

Before entering academia, Dawit was a human rights lawyer working with national-level advocacy organizations in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. She served as advisor and consultant to human rights and reproductive health organizations working to strengthen their national and regional policy impact. She is a founding member of the African Women's Leadership Institute, a regional leadership training program for senior leaders of women's organizations and government ministries. She has been consultant to the United Nations Development Fund, International Office of Migration, the Ford Foundation, Women's International Law and Development in Africa, Akina Mama wa Afrika, and the Inter-Africa Committee, among others.

Dawit's current research interests include positive peace work, peace studies in post-conflict settings, and global economic movements. She reads in ancient history, literature, art, and social justice. She is widely traveled and an urban gardener at-large.

Nina Chung Dwyer

Nina Chung Dwyer is an artist whose works have been shown in galleries in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and New York. She also teaches drawing, watercolor, and oil painting at Montgomery College, George Washington University, and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as in her private studio.

Dwyer's extensive travels overseas, particularly to China, have informed much of her work. A mixed-media group exhibition at the BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, Maryland, featured her drawings and paintings of the terra-cotta army of Xi'an, China. She also presented a lecture and workshop on the subject.

Eric Key

Director, Arts Program

Eric Key is an art lover, investor, and collector who—by his own admission—"can't draw a straight line." He came to UMGC in 2008 with more than 35 years of experience in art administration, after serving for more than a decade as executive director of the Kansas African American Museum (Wichita). He also served as director of programs for the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, curator for the African American Museum, and assistant curator of African American history at Old City Park, all in Dallas, Texas. Over the course of his career, he has curated more than 200 culturally diverse exhibitions; worked with countless artists, curators, and directors; and expanded and sharpened his knowledge of the art field.

Since Key joined UMGC, the university has added almost 2,200 individual pieces to its collection and has increased the percentage of works on public display. Key is responsible for the overall care of the collection, its development, and its future. He also leads the university's robust visual arts exhibition program, which features several new exhibitions in the UMGC Arts Program Gallery each year.

Key earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in museum studies from Hampton University.

Afie Mirshah-Nayar, EdD

Afie Mirshah-Nayar, EdD, principal of Largo High School, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, has worked in the field of education for more than 15 years. Throughout her career, her focus has been on the education of high school students. Her professional experiences include both school-based and central office–based positions. Before becoming the principal of Largo High School, she worked as a principal intern at Walter Johnson High School, Bethesda; assistant principal and acting principal at Richard Montgomery High School, Rockville; academic achievement specialist at the Office of School Performance, Rockville; assistant to the associate superintendent and secondary English as a Second Language (ESOL) content specialist for the Office of Organizational Development, Germantown; and ESOL teacher at John F. Kennedy High School and Albert Einstein High School, both in Silver Spring.

Mirshah-Nayar earned a doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), certification in administration and supervision from Hood College, a master's degree from American University, and a bachelor's degree from UMCP.

Amy Eva Raehse

Amy Eva Raehse is executive director, partner, and vice president of Goya Contemporary and Goya-Girl Press in Baltimore, Maryland. Raehse has worked in museum, not-for-profit, commercial, and academic sectors of the arts. She has curated more than 100 exhibitions and has placed artworks in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); Smithsonian Institution museums (Washington, D.C.); Baltimore Museum of Art (Maryland); Philadelphia Museum of Art (Pennsylvania); and Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, Virginia). For more than 20 years, Raehse has been an independent curator; taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Mount Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and lectured extensively on professional practices.

Raehse has juried myriad platforms and has authored exhibition catalogue essays and articles in several publications. She holds an MFA and a BFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Christopher Shields

Christopher Shields, a financial market data quality expert, is director of business operations for NASDAQ.com. As manager of production operations for a website that reaches six million users, he has deployed hundreds of features for the site including the very popular real-time NASDAQ last sale.

Shields is fluent in the use of Photoshop, Microsoft Project, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, DoubleClick DART, Omniture SiteCatalyst, Akamai Performance Analytics, Microsoft SQL, XML, RSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  

He earned an MS in Management with a specialization in Information Systems and Services from UMUC* and a BS in Art Education from State University of New York College at New Paltz.

Dianne A. Whitfield-Locke, DDS

Dianne A. Whitfield-Locke, DDS, is a dentist with offices in Washington, D.C., and Capitol Heights, Maryland. She is also known throughout the region as an avid art collector and patron of the arts.

Whitfield-Locke and her husband have amassed roughly 1,000 works of art over the past 10 years—a relatively short period of time for a collection of that size. Although she has an affinity for artworks from the late 1800s to 1940 and concentrates on collecting sculptures, she also recognizes the need to support emerging and established contemporary artists and has expanded her collection to include masterful works by some of the world’s most recognized African American artists. Works by James Richmond Barthé, Elizabeth Catlett, Selma Burke, Sam Gilliam, Augusta Savage, James Phillips, Simmie Knox, David Driskell, Samella S. Lewis, E. J. Montgomery, Lois Mailou Jones, Reginald Gammon, James Wells, Tim Davis, Ed Clark, Benny Andrews, Edward Bannister, Robert Duncanson, Palmer Hayden, Aaron Douglas, and Romare Bearden can all be found in her impressive collection.

Whitfield-Locke earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia; a Master of Arts in Teaching from Northeastern University in Chicago; and a Doctor of Dental Surgery with a specialty in Pediatric Dentistry from Howard University. She spends her time outside her private dental practice reading about art, artists, and art history; supporting local artists; advocating for art initiatives and philanthropic causes; and helping to develop and advance the Arts Program at UMGC by serving on UMGC's Art Advisory Board.

Sharon Wolpoff

Sharon Wolpoff is a full-time artist whose work has been exhibited extensively, most recently in California at the Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey and at the Natsoulas Gallery in Davis. She is known for her vibrant, light-filled oil paintings of everyday scenes as well as her other forms of art: beadwork, etchings, and monoprints.

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has acquired three of her Desert series paintings for its Art Bank, in addition to The Fourth of July, which became part of the Wilson Building Collection in 2006.

Wolpoff took her first art lessons at age five and began painting in oil by age 12. She is a graduate of American University, where she received a BA in Fine Arts and an MFA in Painting, as well as a JD from AU's Washington College of Law. She spent her junior year abroad, studying painting and printmaking at the Tyler School of Art in Rome.

In 1988, Wolpoff began exhibiting her work regularly, in solo as well as group shows. Soon, a steady stream of solo shows began to unfold, including exhibits at American University's Watkins Gallery; the Jacqueline C. Hudgens Center for the Arts in Atlanta, Georgia; Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, North Carolina; and Northwood University in Midland, Michigan.

Among her many honors are three Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards (1997, 1998, and 1999), an Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County Fellowship (1996), and a Kreeger Purchase Prize.

Her studio is located in Kensington, Maryland. Her artwork is represented by Edward Montgomery Fine Art in Carmel, California.

Elizabeth Zoltan

Elizabeth Zoltan is an education and ergonomic consultant. Before that, she served as senior director for school support for Connections Education, a Baltimore company that provides virtual education to students in grades K–12.

Zoltan, who holds both a PhD and an MA in Engineering Psychology from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Psychology from the same institution, has served in a number of administrative posts in Maryland and elsewhere, including vice president and provost for Frederick Community College in Frederick, Maryland; dean of business and social sciences at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California; and associate dean of undergraduate studies and the College of Liberal Arts at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland.