Casey Riley is chair of the Department of Global Contemporary Art at Mia, where she leads the research, exhibition, and publication of the museum’s renowned collection of art after 1970. Her curatorial practices are rooted in collaboration and informed by the principles of equity and inclusion. Riley joined the museum in 2018 as head of the Department of Photography and New Media and in 2021 became chair of the Department of Global Contemporary Art.
Since 2021, her projects at Mia have included “The last safe abortion,” a site-specific installation by the artist Carmen Winant that was selected for inclusion in the 2024 Whitney Biennial; “In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now,” a critically acclaimed survey of more than 150 works by First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Native American photographic artists; and “American Gothic: Gordon Parks and Ella Watson,” organized in partnership with the Gordon Parks Foundation.
In 2025, she co-organized the reinstallation of the museum’s collection of global contemporary art and was the site curator for two traveling exhibitions: “The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole” in Mia’s Harrison Photography Gallery and “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” in the Target Gallery.
Prior to Mia, Riley was the assistant curator at the Boston Athenaeum and consulting curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She’s published widely on American art and photographic history, and currently serves on the board of directors for the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. An experienced educator, Riley is a graduate of Yale University, holds master’s degrees from Brown University and Middlebury College, and earned her PhD from Boston University. She’s a member of the 2023 class of fellows at the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York City.