About

Ruth founded Jerusalem Culture Unlimited in 2012 as a transformational capacity-building initiative to raise Jerusalem’s abundant emerging and small to mid-size arts and culture organizations to their next level. JCU programs engage new thinking, tools, and skills to build organizational infrastructure that ensures operational stability, program quality, and vitality. Program alumni have surfaced as artistic leadership in the city, building innovative arts spaces and programming that have transformed Jerusalem into a creative, world class cultural hub.

Ruth Cummings has lived in Jerusalem since 1994 and has professional and lay leadership experience as an independent consultant for creative community building, resource development, and program strategy for the Israel Festival, Jerusalem Cinematheque, the Lab, and Bakehila. Ruth’s current board affiliations include: Vertigo Dance Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Jewish Funders Network, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Nirit is an organizational consultant with expertise in resource development, strategic planning, sustainability, and capacity building. She has over 20 years of experience in fundraising consultation, writing guidebooks, training NGO’s and social entrepreneurs in capacity-building and sustainability, both in Europe and in Israel.

After 3 years as a project coordinator for a German political foundation in Israel, Nirit led Shatil’s Resource Development Department. Previously, Nirit was also the director of the Pratt Foundation’s Pradler NGO Empowerment Program.

Nirit has also led special projects at the Tower of David Museum. As a co-curator, she carried out historical and artistic research for exhibitions, and served as liaison to the Smithsonian Museum. Nirit was born in Jerusalem and still lives in the city today.

Rivka is the Program Director at Jerusalem Culture Unlimited (JCU), creating and supporting initiatives to strengthen Jerusalem’s arts and culture ecosystem.

Rivka is a multimedia artist, designer, editor and translator. Her current work moves between video, photography, and collage and investigates landscape as a polyvalent lens of collective memory, history and trauma. Rivka has been working in the fields of design and arts administration for the past 10 years, including at WRT Design+Planning, the NYC Public Design Commission and the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. She holds a Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, and she is a candidate in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

Shlomit is a curator currently based in Israel. She recently moved to Jerusalem, holding a position of the Assistant to the Chief Curator of Fine Arts at the Israel Museum, and in addition curating shows independently at Barbur Gallery and Artists Cube in Jerusalem, among other cultural institutions. Prior to this,  while living in the United States, Dror has organized exhibitions in New York Metropolitan area including, “In Her Eyes: Women Behind and in Front of the Camera,” (Newark Museum, 2012), “F_ll in the Bl_nk” (NARS Foundation, 2013), “Ready or Not: 2014 New Jersey Arts Annual” (Newark Museum, 2014), “Seeing through Abstraction” (Residency Unlimited, 2015), “Story of a Story” (Smack Mellon, 2015), “Almost Home: Between Staying and Leaving a Phantom Land” (Dorsky Gallery, 2017), group exhibition at Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University (2017),  among others. 

Dror’s writing has been published through CUE Art Foundation’s Young Art Critics Mentoring Program and has been included in several exhibition catalogs. In addition, Dror held the position of the Consulting Curator of American Art at the Newark Museum, and has worked in various institutions, including El Museo del Barrio, The Felix Gonzalez -Torres Foundation, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Inchoen Women Artists Biennale. She has served as a visiting critic at Art Port (Tel Aviv), Bezalel Academy of Art (Jerusalem), Residency Unlimited, The Wassaic Project, Wave Hill Visual Arts Program and the Elizabeth Foundation in New York. She received an MA in Museum Studies from New York University and a BA in Art History and Latin American Studies from Bard College. She also took part in Independent Curators International’s (ICI) Curatorial Intensive program.

Yaakov is a Senior Project Associate at Rosov Consulting, conducting program and impact evaluations for a variety of Israeli and American non-profits. Previously, Yaakov served as JCU’s Program Director.

Yaakov was a recipient of the 2018-2019 Dorot Fellowship, where he interviewed religious and political activists, and studied spoken Palestinian Arabic. Prior to Dorot, Yaakov was an analyst at an Israeli think tank, researching topics in Israeli public policy, and developing models for socioeconomic development. Yaakov holds a B.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Political Science from Brandeis University and has volunteered with Encounter and the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations.

Multi-disciplinary artist and social activist, dealing with concepts relating to feminism, self-representation, class, and blackness. Graduate of the Photography Department at Minshar College.