Valerie Cassel Oliver is curator of modern and contemporary art at the

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the su ...

(VMFA). Previously she was senior curator at the

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948, dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public. As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visual ...

(CAMH) in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. Cassel's work is often focused on representation, inclusivity and highlighting artists of different social and cultural backgrounds.

Early life

Oliver grew up in Houston, then attended the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

and graduate school at

Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...

. She also holds an EMBA degree from

Columbia Business School Columbia Business School (CBS) is the business school of Columbia University, a Private university, private research university in New York City. Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of six Ivy League business schools and is one ...

Career

Oliver was a program specialist in charge of administrating grants for

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

from 1988 to 1995. She also worked at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

for five years directing the Visiting Artists Program. In 2000, she was a co-curator of the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

. Oliver joined CAMH in 2000 as associate curator and was promoted to full curator in 2006, then senior curator in 2010. During that time Cassel Oliver helped curate a number of successful touring exhibits including ''Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art'' (2012) and ''Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image'' (2008). In June 2017, she joined the Virginia Museum of Fine Art as curator of modern and contemporary art, Oliver's first show at the VMFA has been announced for January 2019, featuring painter

Howardena Pindell Howardena Pindell (born April 14, 1943) is an American artist, curator, and educator. She is known as a painter and mixed media artist, her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing ...

and co-curated with Naomi Beckwith of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Honors

In 2006, Oliver won a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship. In 2011, she won the

David C. Driskell David C. Driskell (June 7, 1931 – April 1, 2020) was an American artist, scholar and curator; recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art as a distinct field of study. In his lifetime, Driskell was cited as one of the world’ ...

Prize from

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...

, a $25,000 prize recognizing contributions of an artist or scholar in the field of the art of the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...

Exhibitions

* ''The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse'', VMFA, Richmond, Virginia, 2021 * '' Angel Otero: Everything and Nothing'', CAMH, Houston, TX, 2016 * ''Right Here, Right Now: Houston, Volume 2'', CAMH, Houston, TX, 2016 * '' Jennie C. Jones: Compilation'', CAMH, Houston, TX, 2015 * ''

Trenton Doyle Hancock Trenton Doyle Hancock (born 1974) is an American artist working with Printmaking, prints, drawings, and collaged-felt paintings. Through his work, Hancock mainly aims to tell the story of the Mounds, mystical creatures that are part of the artist ...

: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing'', 2014 * ''Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art'', 2013 * ''Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft'', 2010 * ''Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us'', 2010 * ''Cinema Remixed & Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image since 1970'', 2007 * ''Black Light/White Noise'', 2007 * ''

Double Consciousness Double consciousness is the internal conflict experienced by subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society. The term and the idea were first published in W. E. B. Du Bois's autoethnographic work, ''The Souls of Black Folk'' in 1903 ...

: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970'', 2005 * ''Splat Boom Pow! The Influence of

Cartoon A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

s in Contemporary Art'', 2003

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oliver, Valerie Cassel American art curators American women curators Year of birth missing (living people) People from Houston Howard University alumni University of Texas alumni Living people People associated with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 21st-century American women Columbia Business School alumni