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Keisha Williams will begin as Director and Curator of the 51���Ϲ��� Galleries and Exhibitions on June 27, 2022.

Keisha Williams is an independent curator and arts administrator. For nearly four years she has served as the Curatorial Department Assistant and Artist Liaison at the Minneapolis of Art (Mia) in the G lobal Contemporary Art Department. A strong facilitator and project manager, she worked closely with Mia’s curatorial teams and the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) to move vision to reality. In addition, she has worked to collaborate with other arts-based organizations including the National Maritime Museum of London on their International Slavery Remembrance Day programming, the Emerging Curators Institute as an advisor and workshop leader, Battersea Arts Centre as a Young Producer, and author of 51���Ϲ���’s MFA 2021 Graduate Essay. A practice-based researcher, her work centers equity, meaning-making, community-centered collaboration, and interrogating institutional practices. She holds an MA in Visual Arts Management and Curating from Richmond American University in London (2017) and an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies from the University of Leeds (2015).

Her curatorial philosophy centers care, co-creation, and uplifting underrepresented voices. She is co-cu rator of MSP Airport’s upcoming exhibition Chroma 2022: A Spectrum of Beauty from the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. She is also curator and collaborator of multiple projects at Mia including curator of Joe Horton: Vessel (2019), and co-curator of Mapping Black Identities (2019-2020), and Mapping Black Identities: 3 Films (2019). She is co-founder of the Curatorial Advisory Committee, an initiative to expand curatorial voice and expertise, and co-founder and facilitator of the BIPOC employee resource group at Mia. She is a contributing author to the Routledge publication “Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity and Critical Event Studies”, 2019 and the American Alliance of Museums publication “Small Wins to Sweeping Change: Internal Initiatives to Foster Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism in Museums”, 2022. She currently serves on the Board of Directors at Highpoint Center for Printmaking.

On joining 51���Ϲ���, Keisha shared: “Working within our values can be a radical act in galleries and museums, and I’m dedicated to the further pursuit of that. It’s my goal to work with thought leaders of the future to continue to interrogate and redefine the practice of curation, the role of the gallery, and amplify the need for a more collaborative, relational, and equitable future for contemporary art and the 51���Ϲ��� community.”