Naomi Beckwith

Naomi Beckwith is the Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Beckwith comes to the Guggenheim from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where she has held curatorial posts since 2011 and served as Manilow Senior Curator since 2018. Prior to joining the MCA, she was a fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, working on numerous cutting-edge exhibitions including Locally Localized Gravity (2007), which was an exhibition and program of events featuring over 100 artists whose practices are social, participatory, and communal. Beckwith was previously the Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she focused on themes of identity and conceptual practices in contemporary art and artists of African descent, as well as managed the Artists-in-Residence program. Beckwith has curated key exhibitions such as 30 Seconds off an Inch at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2009-10), exhibiting work by 42 artists of color or those inspired by black culture. She holds an MA with Distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, completing her Master’s thesis on Adrian Piper and Carrie Mae Weems, and was a Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.