Allison Glenn, curator

Allison Glenn, curator

Allison Glenn is a curator and writer deeply invested in working closely with artists to develop ideas, artworks, and exhibitions that respond to and transform our understanding of the world. Glenn’s curatorial work focuses on the intersection of art and publics, through public art, biennials, special projects, and major new commissions by a wide range of contemporary artists.

She is one of the curators for the Counterpublic 2023 triennial, running April 15-July 15, 2023 in St. Louis, presenting the work of Sir David Adjaye OM OBE, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Mendi + Keith Obadike and Maya Stovall, in collaboration with The Griot Museum of Black History and the George B. Vashon Museum of African American History.

Glenn received substantial critical and community praise for her curatorial work in the 2021 groundbreaking exhibition at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky titled Promise, Witness, Remembrance an exhibition that reflected on the life of Breonna Taylor, centered on her portrait painted by Amy Sherald. The New York Times selected the exhibition as one of the Best Art Exhibitions of 2021. Glenn was listed as one of the 2022 ArtNews Deciders and on the 2021 Observer Arts Power 50 List.

Glenn was previously Senior Curator at Public Art Fund; Associate Curator, Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, where she shaped how outdoor sculpture activates and engages Crystal Bridges’ 120-acre campus; Manager of Publications and Curatorial Associate for Prospect New Orleans’ international art triennial Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, and Curatorial Fellow with the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

Previous exhibitions include In Our Time: Selections from the Singer Collection (2022), Color Field (2018), In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street (2016), Hank Willis Thomas: Bench Marks (2015); and Out of Easy Reach (2018), which was on view simultaneously at DePaul Art Museum, Stony Island Arts Bank and Gallery 400, which traveled to Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University.