Laurie Ann Farrell is currently senior curator at Dallas Contemporary. She was previously Head of Modern and Contemporary Art Department and Senior Curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts from 2016 to 2019. In this role she made numerous acquisitions from artists such as Barkley L. Hendricks, Nicholas Hlobo, Rashid Johnson, Ebony G. Patterson, Cornelia Parker, Robin Rhode, Do Ho Suh, Carrie Mae Weems and others in an effort to broaden the collection. In December 2018 she curated Ruben & Isabel Toledo: Labor of Love featuring new works made in response to the DIA collections and Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals.
She started her career in 1999 at the Museum for African Art in New York where she was the first curator of contemporary art. Highlight exhibitions include the group exhibitions Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art (2004) and Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora (2003). From 2007 to 2016 Farrell was executive director of exhibitions at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
In 2006, she organized the American participation at the inaugural The Luanda Triennale with support and funding provided by the U.S. Department of State. Farrell received the Abraaj Capital Art Prize with artist Kader Attia in 2010, the ArtTable New Leadership award in 2011, and the Southeast Museum Conference Museum Leadership Award in 2015. Widely published in art journals, Farrell has lectured throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.
Laurie Ann Farrell’s visit is organised in collaboration with the embassy of The Netherlands in the US.