NOCCA Alum Spotlight: Gia Hamilton, Cultural Broker
Gia Hamilton
NOCCA Alum Helping NOCCA Alumni | Joan Mitchel Center Director
“It is a lot of responsibility to be a good neighbor, leader, connector, and conductor of resources.
It is work that I am committed to and it fuels my direction and how I work with people”
Gia M. Hamilton, a native of New Orleans, received her Bachelor’s in cultural anthropology with a minor in visual art from New York University and her Master’s in applied anthropology from City University of New York. Hamilton has received continuing educational support through NODE Center for Curatorial Studies in Berlin Germany and Professional Coaching training at Ekaya Institute in California as well as training in eastern healing modalities such as massage therapy, acupuncture and herbology. For 15 years in New York City, Hamilton worked with non-profit organizations as a serial entrepreneur, program development consultant, cultural practitioner and curator. Gia spent 6 years working in the corporate sector as a researcher and organizational design consultant with Downey Associates International, supporting financial firms and non-profit organizations in their restructuring process. In 2009, Hamilton founded Gris Gris Lab, as a place based incubator and cultural exchange space to ensure that emerging thought-leaders could actualize their interdisciplinary projects through an innovative live- work model in Central City, New Orleans. Later, Gris Gris Lab built a team of social scientists who began cultural consulting to further support and strengthen the local economies and infrastructure of non-profits and small businesses in New Orleans, Seattle, Haiti, Washington D.C., Detroit and New York City through a model developed by Hamilton called Social Magic.
Hamilton joined the Joan Mitchell Center in 2011 as a consultant and was appointed Director in July 2013. She comes to the Joan Mitchell Center with a broad perspective of visual art, operational functions and community development where she acts as a conductor of information and liaison between the New York and New Orleans communities as well as a catalyst for change in contemporary art by designing innovative models for artistic and cultural exchanges and expansive and timely public programming. Hamilton is currently on the board of Alliance for Artist Communities and a member of ArtTable, Independent Curators International, Inc., Res Artis, The American Anthropological Association, and a Dr. Norman Francis Leadership Institute 2014-2015 Fellow. Hamilton lives and works with her four sons who she “creatively” schools in New Orleans.