Thelma Golden is an American art curator, who is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. She is noted as one of the originators of the term post-blackness.
The best advice I can give to anyone, across all fields, is to understand your purpose. This, for some, can take years. But once you know your purpose, and believe in it wholly, you will be able to fully engage in all the possibilities of the self.
There are so many talented and imaginative young curators and cultural professionals of color who are forging new paths in art criticism, history, scholarship, and exhibition-making. The breadth of perspectives they contribute to the arts, as well as their inspired sense of world-making, is shaping an expansive collective understanding of art history and will continue to do so well into the future. Pay special attention to them.
A woman I deeply admire is Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, who was the Director of the Studio Museum in Harlem from 1977 to 1987, and the first person I met when I was an intern at the Studio Museum during my college years. Mary has gone on to do some truly incredible things. She has served as Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of New York; the Dean of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts; and the President of Spelman College. To me, Mary has always, and continues to be, a glowing model for what is possible in this world.
Art!
