GREATEST: ART OF CURATION
How the female curators of three blue-chip galleries are shaping the art world, one show at a time.
What does it mean to be a person of color working in the art world today? For this issue of GREATEST, I sat down with three respected female curators to delve into their roles, the spaces they occupy and the bold ways in which they are shifting traditional narratives and systems in the art world.
I began in Los Angeles with Essence Harden, the Visual Arts Curator and Program Manager at the California African American Museum, who spoke about her unorthodox route into curation and her admiration for the bravery of artists. Later I met with Kathy Huang, Managing Director at Jeffrey Deitch, who talked about the making of her groundbreaking 2022 exhibition “Wonder Women,” shown in both New York and Los Angeles, which put Asian-American women front and center through the work of 30 female and non-binary artists. And lastly, I connected with Ebony L. Haynes, the Senior Director of David Zwirner’s 52 Walker gallery, who spoke about breaking away from gallery conventions in search of a slowed-down, more meaningful approach to celebrating art.
Collectively, the stories and experiences shared paint a portrait of what curation means today—and provide a glimpse of what curation might mean for the next generation.
— Antoine J. Girard