The Designators are leading figures in the design, artistic, and preservation professions in Boston, demonstrating that projects funded by the Foundation must be of the highest professional and design quality standards.
“The designators relish their role in contributing to the civic life of Boston by providing funds for projects from public art to restoration of historic elements throughout the neighborhoods of Boston at the behest of the George B. Henderson Foundation.”
Deneen Crosby
Chair
Vin Cipolla is President and CEO of Historic New England. He has held senior leadership positions at the National Park Foundation, the Municipal Art Society of New York, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He was the Chairman and President of the ICA / Boston, among many other trustee leadership appointments.
Deneen Crosby is a founding Principal and the Director of Landscape Architecture at Crosby | Schlessinger | Smallridge LLC. She has over 30 years of design experience, including more than 100 constructed projects in the Boston metropolitan area. In 2009, she was appointed to the Boston Civic Design Commission.
Celia has always focused on leveraging cultural, artistic, and economic development to create lasting social impact, programs, and initiatives that benefit underserved communities. Celia is the Community Engagement and Programs Director for nonprofit hunger relief organization Daily Table, has served on the boards of Haley House, Clipper Ship Foundation, ABCD Boston, Historic Boston, and Discover Roxbury, and is a graduate of Brandeis University.
Brian Hone is a cultural producer and creative consultant working at the intersections of museum practice, art education, and design, currently serving as Curator of Education with MassArt Art Museum (MAAM) at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He holds a BFA in painting, a BS in art education from Miami University (Oxford, OH), and a Master of Liberal Arts in museum studies from Harvard University, Extension School. He was appointed to the Boston Art Commission in 2020.
Byron Rushing served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1982-2018, representing Boston’s South End neighborhood. Representative Rushing’s background is in community organizing and in African American history. Before entering the Legislature, he was President of the Museum of Afro-American History. In 1979, Rep. Rushing oversaw the lobbying effort in Congress to establish the Boston African American National Historical Site, a component of the National Park Service.
Nida Sinnokrot is an Assistant Professor of Art, Culture, and Technology at MIT. He received his BA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA from Bard College and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (2001). He is a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellow (2002) and a Fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude (2012-15). He is a working artist who regularly exhibits his work in various public collections.
Gerald W.R. Ward is a Senior Consulting Curator and the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was heavily involved in the planning of the museum’s new Art of the Americas wing. He graduated from Harvard College and received his PhD in American and New England Studies from Boston University. Prior to the MFA, Mr. Ward worked at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Winterthur Museum, and the Strawbery Banke Museum.
