Biographical Notes
Dr. Maura Reilly is the Director of the Zimmerli Art Museum and Professor of Art History at Rutgers University. She has held several leadership positions in the arts, including as Executive Director of the National Academy of Design, where she is responsible for turning around the 200-year-old organization on the brink of dissolution, as well as Senior Curator at the American Federation of Arts, where she organized major traveling exhibitions, like Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900. She is the Founding Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she developed and launched the first exhibition and public programming space in the USA devoted entirely to feminist art. While there, she organized several landmark exhibitions, including the permanent installation of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party and the blockbuster Global Feminisms (co-curated with Linda Nochlin), among others. Reilly has curated over two dozen exhibitions internationally with a focus on under-represented artists and social justice concerns, including, most recently, transfeminisms (2024-5), Michelle Agins: Storyteller (2024), Judy Watson: Shadow Bone (2024), and Wandamba yalungka/Winds change direction (2021). Reilly has authored several books on global contemporary artists and has also written extensively on curatorial practice, including Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating (Thames & Hudson, 2018), which has received many accolades, including a listing as one of the “Top 10 Best Art Books” of 2018 from The New York Times. Her next book, Museums & Social Justice, is forthcoming from Thames & Hudson in 2026. Dr. Reilly has held academic teaching positions at the Tufts University (Medford, MA), Queensland College of Art (Brisbane, Australia), Sydney College of Art (Sydney, Australia), and at Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ). Dr. Reilly received her M.A. and PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, under the direction of Linda Nochlin. For more information, visit: www.maurareilly.com