The University of Texas at Austin alumna and incoming curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art Kimberli Gant (PhD in Art History, 2017) was selected as VIA’s 2022 Curatorial Fellow, which carries an award of $25,000 to support curatorial research and travel. Gant was previously Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA and begins her new role as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art beginning mid-January 2022.
“As a curator of modern and contemporary art, I have always tried to ensure that the visitors to any museum I work at feel seen through the exhibitions I curate and the programming I develop," said Gant. "Moreover, I want people to see art as an essential part of their lives, not as a luxury or an option only for the wealthy.”
Gant has spent the past fifteen years exhibiting and working with artists who create dynamic objects that generate commentary relevant to diverse communities. With VIA’s support, she will continue her curatorial goals of engaging overlooked populations by creating a database of collectors of African diasporic art, focusing on collectors who share that identity. In addition to serving as a personal research tool, this database will also become available to other curators unfamiliar with these collections for future research and access outside their local regions.
VIA Art Fund is a 501(c)(3) founded by an international coalition of individuals and private foundations who believe in the central role art plays in society. Since 2017, VIA has annually awarded a curatorial fellowship grant to foster ambitious curatorial research. The aim of the award is to support visionary curators by providing discretionary funds for exhibition research, travel, and the general development of the curator’s area of inquiry, while also informing VIA’s grantmaking decisions through an engagement with today’s leading curatorial voices. Previous recipients of the VIA curatorial fellowship include Wassan Al-Khudhairi, chief curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Lumi Tan, curator of The Kitchen, New York; Jamillah James, curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Cathleen Chaffee, chief curator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; and Naomi Beckwith, Manilow senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.