Black Curators Matter

Kellie Jones is the Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latinx and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. A member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,  Jones was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2016. Her writings have appeared in a multitude of exhibition catalogues and journals. 

She is the author of two books published by Duke University Press, “EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art” (2011), and “South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s” (2017). Jones has also worked as a curator for over three decades and has numerous major national and international exhibitions to her credit. The exhibition “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980,” at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, was named one of the best exhibitions of 2011 and 2012 by Artforum. Jones has received numerous awards including the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University; Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and a term as Scholar-in-Residence at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny, France.

Rujeko Hockley is the Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She co-curated the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Additional projects at the Whitney include “Amy Sherald:American Sublime” (forthcoming), “Inheritance” (2023), “2 Lizards” (2022), “Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing” (2021), “Julie Mehretu” (2021), “Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined” (2017) and “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-201”7 (2017).

Previously, she was assistant curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she co-curated “Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond” (2014) and was involved in exhibitions highlighting the permanent collection as well as artists LaToya Ruby Frazier, Kehinde Wiley, and others. She is the co-curator of “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85” (2017), which originated at the Brooklyn Museum and travelled to three U.S. venues in 2017-18. She serves on the Boards of Art Matters, Institute For Freedoms, and Museums Moving Forward, as well as the Advisory Board of Recess.

Franklin Sirmans is the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) since fall of 2015. Prior to his appointment in Miami, he was the department head and curator of contemporary art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from 2010 until 2015 and from 2006 to 2010, he was curator of modern and contemporary art at The Menil Collection, Houston. After internships at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Sirmans’ initial museum position was at Dia Center for the Arts, 1993 to 1996, in the publications department. After serving as editor at Flash Art magazine in Milan from 1996 to 1998, Sirmans began making exhibitions. 

Since 1998, he has organized numerous exhibitions, including ”One Planet Under A Groove: Contemporary Art and Hip Hop”; ”NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith”; “Fútbol: The Beautiful Game” and monographic shows such as Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964-1966, Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada, Maurizio Cattelan: Is There Life Before Death among others. Sirmans was the artistic director of Prospect.3 New Orleans in 2014. Sirmans was born in New York City and raised in Harlem, Albany and New Rochelle, New York. He earned his English and Art History degrees from Wesleyan University with an Honors Thesis on Jean-Michel Basquiat, in 1991.

LeRonn P. Brooks is an art historian and curator of the African American Art History Initiative at the Getty Research Institute as well as curator of African American collections and acquisitions at the GRI. Prior to working at the Getty he was an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College and a curator for The Racial Imaginary Institute, founded by poet Claudia Rankine. He received his PhD from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Brooks is also the curator, and co-curator, of several archives including those of the Johnson Publishing Company, architect Paul Revere Williams, sculptor Richard Hunt, and Dr. Robert Farris Thompson, among others. His interviews essays on African American art, and poetry have been featured in Callaloo Journal, The International Review of African American Art, and the Aperture Foundation, as well as in many exhibition catalogues including “Dawoud Bey: Elegy”, “Torkwase Dyson: A Liquid Belonging” (2023), “Photography” and the “American South Since 1845”, and “Faith Ringgold: American People” (2022), among others.

Thomas J. Lax is curator of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art. They co-organized the exhibition “Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces” (2022) with Lilia Rocio Taboada in collaboration with JAM’s founder Linda Goode Bryant. They worked with colleagues across MoMA on a major rehang of its collection (2019) and co-organized the exhibition “Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done” (2018) with Ana Janevski and Martha Joseph. 

Their other collaboratively-organized exhibitions include the Projects Series for emerging artists with Lanka Tattersall; “Unfinished Conversations,” inspired by the cultural theorist Stuart Hall; the contemporary art quintennial, Greater New York; and commissions with artists including Neïl Beloufa, Maria Hassabi, and Steffani Jemison. Previously, they worked at The Studio Museum in Harlem for seven years, where they organized “When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South” and participated in the landmark “f show” contemporary art series.