Adrienne Edwards

Adrienne Edwards is a New York–based art curator, scholar, and writer.^[1][2] Edwards is currently the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art.^[3]

Career

Edwards curated performance commissions at Performa from 2010 to 2018.^[4] From 2016 to in 2018, Edwards worked as curator at large at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.^[4] In 2016, she curated a show Blackness in Abstraction, at Pace Gallery.^[5][6] In 2019, Edwards with Danielle A. Jackson curated an exhibition at the Whitney: Jason Moran, the first museum survey devoted to the MacArthur-winning pianist and conceptualist.^[7] Edwards received a Ph.D. in performance studies from New York University.^[8] She previously taught art history and visual studies at New York University and The New School.^[8]

Whitney Biennial 2022

Main article: 2022 Whitney Biennial

In October 2019, the Whitney Museum announced that Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin would curate the 2022 Whitney Biennial.^[9] She is the official co-curator alongside David Breslin for Quiet as It's Kept, the eighteenth iteration of the landmark exhibition.^[10] The 2022 Whitney Biennial officially opens to the public on April 6, 2022.

Writing

Edwards authored the catalog for Blackness in Abstraction, the group exhibition she organized at Pace Gallery; as well as, contributing to the "Carrie Mae Weems: The Kitchen Table Series" and Ellen Gallagher's catalog Accidental Records.^[11] Edwards was the performance reviews editor for the journal of feminist theory Women & Performance.^[4]

Other activities

Edwards chaired the juries that selected Kapwani Kiwanga for the Frieze Artist Award (2018)^[12] and Simone Leigh and Sonia Boyce for awards at the Venice Biennale (2022).^[13] In 2019, she nominated Yto Barrada for the Prince Pierre Foundation's International Contemporary Art Prize; the prize ultimately went to Arthur Jafa though.^[14][15]

Other activities include:

• Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Member of the Advisory Board (since 2019)^[16]
• Denniston Hill, Member of the Advisory Board^[17]