The Barnes Foundation has created a new VP-level position — Vice President for Art and Education & Gund Family Chief Curator — and appointed Connie Choi, PhD, to serve as the Barnes Foundation Chief Curator, effective September 8, 2026. Choi arrives from nearly a decade at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she most recently served as Curator overseeing the full curatorial department.

The Barnes Foundation Chief Curator Role and What It Means

The appointment carries an organizational decision. Barnes Executive Director Thom Collins has merged the curatorial, conservation, research, interpretation, and adult education departments under Connie Choi’s leadership — making this not just a curatorial hire but a restructuring of how the Barnes Foundation integrates its scholarly and public-facing work. Curatorial and educational vision at the Barnes have always been meant to be inseparable. Consolidating them under a single VP formalizes that intention structurally.

Connie Choi spent nearly ten years at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her projects there include the first museum survey of artist Tom Lloyd and the largest collection exhibition in the institution’s history, both produced for the Studio Museum’s new building opening in November 2025. Her 2019–21 traveling exhibition Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem earned the Henry Allen Moe Prize for its accompanying catalogue from the New-York Historical Society in 2020.

Who Is the New Barnes Foundation Chief Curator?

Before the Studio Museum, Connie Choi was Assistant Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum, with prior roles at the Hammer Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She holds a PhD in art history and archaeology from Columbia University, an MEd from Harvard, and a BA from Yale, and has taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

The Barnes Foundation Chief Curator role arrives with institutional history behind it. Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who established the Foundation in 1922, was a civil rights advocate and an active figure in the Harlem Renaissance — he collaborated with philosopher Alain Locke on promoting awareness of African art. Choi’s decade of curatorial work at the Studio Museum in Harlem has been grounded in artists, material histories, and cultures of the African diaspora. That alignment isn’t incidental.

Philadelphia has one of the more distinctive arts institutions in the country in the Barnes, and what it does with its curatorial and educational direction matters to anyone who cares about how this city talks to itself through art. Choi arrives with a formed point of view: about access, about scholarship, about who gets the museum survey and when. The programming that follows from September 8 will be worth watching.

About Post Author

Allan Lane

Philadelphia born and bred, Allan Lane is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of digital magazines. He launched his first publication, SportBikes Inc Magazine in 2010, followed by dosage MAGAZINE in 2019. Recently, Allan launched his third online publication, Club For Man. As a journalist, Allan covers fashion, lifestyle, culture, art, and motorcycles.

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