Harlem’s Studio Museum curator Naima Keith named California African American Museum deputy director

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naimakeith

by Carolina A. Miranda

Curator Naima Keith, who for five years helped organize lauded exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, has been named the new deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the California African American Museum  in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. The move brings a nationally recognized curator to the institution, which organizes artistic and historical exhibitions related to African American life in California and beyond.

“She was the top candidate,” says the museum’s executive director George Davis. “She was so impressive. And I really feel that the California African American Museum will have a great vision as a result of her presence.”

In her time at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Keith curated the traveling exhibition“Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989,” the first museum survey devoted to the early works of the L.A.-based abstractionist, which opened at the Hammer Museum early last year.

The show received a nomination for “Best Monographic Museum Show in New York” by the International Assn. of Art Critics — competing against exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.