Melissa Mesina

Melissa Messina is an independent curator, curatorial advisor, and executor of the Mildred Thompson Estate.

For 20 years, her work with regional, national, and international artists has been presented in the U.S. in Atlanta, Kansas City, Miami, New York, New Orleans, Richmond, Savannah, and Washington, D.C., as well as in Bermuda, France, and Hong Kong.

She has curated solo shows for such esteemed female artists as Uta Barth, Lynda Benglis, Chakaia Booker, Maya Lin, Clare Rojas, Shinique Smith and Ursula Von Rydingsvard to name a few; and she has also authored essays on numerous women artists including: Candida Alvarez, Alison Elizabeth Taylor and Trish Tillman, among others.

She has been a recent guest curator at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA, and the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, VA, and was the co-curator of the 2018 and 2020 Bermuda Biennials.

Achievements and Recognition

• Tyson Family Scholar at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, Fall 2019
• Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today catalogue, published 2017; available here
• Former Artistic Director of Flux Projects, 2017
• Former Interim Executive Director and Senior Curator at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, 2008-16
• Recipient of Creative Time | Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant to conduct research on the life and work of mentor Mildred Thompson, 2013
• Public programming for the Prospect.1 New Orleans biennial (as National Program Director for ArtTable), 2007
• Part of the inaugurating team that opened the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum; returned as guest curator and speaker, 2005-07

Contact

Instagram: @melissa_messina

Website: www.messinacuratorial.com