Zoé Whitley (born 30 December 1979) is an American art historian and curator who has been director of
Chisenhale Gallery
Chisenhale Gallery is a non-profit contemporary art gallery based in London's East End.
Background
The organisation focuses on a programme of commissioned exhibitions, events, performances and talks.
The gallery occupies the ground level of a ...
since 2020. Based in London, she has held curatorial positions at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, the
Tate galleries, and the
Hayward Gallery. At the Tate galleries, Whitley co-curated the 2017 exhibition ''
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power'', which was described by ''
ARTnews'' as one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. Soon after she was chosen to organise the
British pavilion
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English ...
at the 2019
Venice Biennale.
Whitley's research interests include contemporary artists and art practices from Africa and 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 ...
.
Early life and education
Zoé Whitley was born on 30 December 1979 in Washington, D.C. Her family moved to Los Angeles, California, when she was a teenager. In high school, she took classes on
art history and
studio art
An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art – especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. Art schools can offer elementary, secondary, post-seco ...
.
She recalled taking a trip to the
Getty Villa after her parents could not afford to send her on a
school trip to Europe.
Whitley attended
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...
in
Pennsylvania, where she studied art history and French.
For her first assignment on
contemporary art, Whitley recounted basing her essay on the thoughts that a black security guard working at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...
gave her about ''Nigredo'' (1984), a painting by
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan hav ...
: "Everything that ended up in my essay, which my art-history professor said was really excellent, came from what he was able to share with me."
While attending Swarthmore, in 1999, Whitley completed an internship at the costume and textiles department of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
There, department head
Sharon Takeda
Sharon ( he, שָׁרוֹן ''Šārôn'' "plain") is a given name as well as an Israeli surname.
In English-speaking areas, Sharon is now predominantly a feminine given name. However, historically it was also used as a masculine given name. In I ...
and her colleague, Kaye Spilker, recommended Whitley become a curator. On their advice, Whitley studied at the
Royal College of Art in London, where she earned a master's degree in
design history.
Her master's thesis examined black representation in ''
Vogue'' magazine. She later earned a PhD from the
University of Central Lancashire
, mottoeng = "From the Earth to the Sun"
, established = as Institution for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledgere-established 1992 (University status granted)
, type = Public
, chancellor ...
, where her work was supervised by British artist and curator
Lubaina Himid.
Career
Whitley started her career at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2003. For two years, Whitley worked as an assistant curator in the museum's prints section. She then became a curator in 2005.
In 2007, she organised ''Uncomfortable Truths'', an exhibition that commemorated the bicentenary of the
abolition
Abolition refers to the act of putting an end to something by law, and may refer to:
* Abolitionism, abolition of slavery
* Abolition of the death penalty, also called capital punishment
* Abolition of monarchy
*Abolition of nuclear weapons
*Abol ...
of the British
slave trade. The exhibition examined traces of the slave trade in contemporary art and design.
In 2013, she stepped down from her position to begin a PhD at the University of Central Lancashire. As an independent curator, she co-curated the
Afrofuturism-focused exhibition ''The Shadows Took Shape'' at the
Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...
.
In 2013, Whitley joined the
Tate galleries. Between 2013 and 2015, she held dual curatorial positions at
Tate Britain and
Tate Modern as curator in international art and curator of contemporary British art, respectively. After April 2017, the focus of her work became international art and the collection of Tate Modern.
With
Mark Godfrey
Mark Godfrey is an American para-alpine skier. He represented the United States at the 1988 Winter Paralympics
The 1988 Winter Paralympic Games (german: Paralympische Winterspiele 1988) were the fourth Winter Paralympics, held again in Innsb ...
, she co-curated the 2017 exhibition ''
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power'', which examined the response of more than sixty artists in America to the
Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent
Black Power movement.
The exhibition, according to Whitley, emphasised "art and artists, rather than a social history of art and ephemera," and includes works by
Frank Bowling,
Betye Saar
Betye Irene Saar (born July 30, 1926) is an African-American artist known for her work in the medium of assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, which eng ...
, and
Barkley L. Hendricks
Barkley L. Hendricks (April 16, 1945 – April 18, 2017) was a contemporary American painter who made pioneering contributions to Black portraiture and conceptualism. While he worked in a variety of media and genres throughout his career (from ph ...
.
''
ARTnews'' described ''Soul of a Nation'' as one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. The
Association of Art Museum Curators recognised Whitley in 2020 for the exhibition.
In 2019, Whitley became senior curator of the
Hayward Gallery.
She was curator of the
British pavilion
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English ...
at the 58th
Venice Biennale later that year, which featured an exhibition of sculptural installations, paintings, and prints by
Cathy Wilkes. Whitley is the first African American curator to organise a
national pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Her first and last exhibition at the Hayward was ''Reverb: Sound into Art'', an exhibition that featured
sound art by
Christine Sun Kim
Christine Sun Kim (born 1980) is an American sound artist based in Berlin. Working predominantly in drawing, performance, and video, Kim's practice considers how sound operates in society. Musical notation, written language, American Sign Langua ...
,
Kahlil Joseph
Kahlil Joseph (pronounced ''"Kha-leel"'') is an American film, television and stage actor and teacher of performing arts. He has worked extensively in the United States and India. Joseph is based in Los Angeles.
Early life
Joseph was born in ...
, and
Oliver Beer.
In 2020, Whitley was appointed director of
Chisenhale Gallery
Chisenhale Gallery is a non-profit contemporary art gallery based in London's East End.
Background
The organisation focuses on a programme of commissioned exhibitions, events, performances and talks.
The gallery occupies the ground level of a ...
.
With Nancy Ireson, Whitley co-curated ''Elijah Pierces America'', a retrospective of the works of American
woodcarver Elijah Pierce exhibited at the
Barnes Foundation. Later that year, she oversaw ''Possessions'', a section of the virtual "
Frieze Viewing Room" that focuses on
spirituality
The meaning of ''spirituality'' has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape o ...
in contemporary art. In 2021, she was appointed to the
Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm
The Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm is an initiative established on 9 June 2020 by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to review public tributes in the British capital, including statues and other landmarks.
History
The commission was ...
, a committee overseeing diversity in London's public monuments and its street and building names.
Personal life
Whitley moved to
London in the early 2000s.
See also
*
Women in the art history field
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitley, Zoe
1979 births
Living people
Directors of museums in the United Kingdom
Women museum directors
African-American curators
African-American women academics
American women academics
African-American academics
African-American historians
American women curators
American curators
American art historians
Women art historians
Historians of African art
People associated with the Tate galleries
People associated with the Victoria and Albert Museum
People from Washington, D.C.
People from Los Angeles
American expatriates in the United Kingdom
Swarthmore College alumni
Alumni of the Royal College of Art
Alumni of the University of Central Lancashire
Historians from California
21st-century African-American people
20th-century African-American people
20th-century African-American women
21st-century African-American women