COURTESY CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM, ST. LOUIS
After its former chief curator, Jeffrey Uslip, resigned amidst controversy surrounding Kelley Walker works featuring images of African-Americans, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis has found a new chief curator: Wassan Al-Khudhairi. She begins at the museum on August 1, 2017.
Al-Khudhairi is currently a curator of modern and contemporary art at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. Prior to that, she had directed Qatar’s Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and had held positions at the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum, the British Museum, and the High Museum of Art. This fall, she will help curate the 2017 Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan.
“We are experiencing an important moment in museums today,” Al-Khudhairi said in a statement. “There is an urgency to think critically about the role and responsibility of art institutions. I am excited to have the opportunity to consider what this means for CAM and St. Louis. I look forward to working closely with the exceptional team at CAM to build and shape an engaging and ambitious program that has roots locally but engages with artists and ideas nationally and internationally.”