Leslie Ureña recently joined the Department as Associate Curator of Global Contemporary Art. Ureña’s exhibitions and research focus on migration, trans-national art practices, and photography as an agent of social change.
Prior to her arrival at Mia, Ureña was curator of photographs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where she organized numerous exhibitions of photography and contemporary art. She has also worked in curatorial departments at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others; taught art history courses in Washington, D.C., as well as in Taipei, Taiwan, where she led the international team of an emerging art gallery. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues, collected volumes, and on The Atlantic, artforum.com, caa.reviews, and ART iT. Ureña holds a BA in the history of art from Yale University and an MA and a PhD in art history from Northwestern University.