Tyler Blackwell
(he/him) is currently the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum. Previously, from 2018-2022, he was the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Associate Curator at the Blaffer
Art Museum, a leading contemporary art institute on the campus of the
University of Houston. Specializing in queer and historically underrepresented
artist practices, post-1960s abstract painting and sculpture, and digital
media, Blackwell has worked in museums for over 10 years. During his tenure at the Blaffer, Blackwell worked in close collaboration with the
museum’s director to rethink and expand the institution’s diverse and
multidisciplinary program of artist-centric exhibitions, publications, public
programs, and community engagement. For that museum, he organized or
co-organized solo exhibitions with a range of emerging and established
international artists, including many artists’ first museum presentations in
the United States. These included major exhibitions of Monira Al Qadiri, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung,
Rodney McMillian, and Rebecca Morris, as well as focus shows of Leslie Martinez, Jacolby Satterwhite, Maria A. Guzmán Capron, Jagdeep
Raina, Jacqueline Nova, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Yoshua Okón. In 2021,
Blackwell co-curated the group exhibition Carriers: The
Body as a Site of Danger and Desire, which featured the work of fifteen
Houston-area artists addressing issues of identity, community health, and
social inequality. He also curated the Houston presentations of the 2019
traveling survey exhibition of the work of Paul Mpagi Sepuya (organized by CAM St. Louis) and the 2021 traveling survey exhibition of artist Hugh Hayden (organized by ICA Miami).
For the Speed, he has iniated a new exhibition series called “Current Speed,” which will focus on emerging and mid-career artists. The first two iterations of this series center on Sky Hopinka (2022) and Kathia St. Hilaire (2023). He is also currently at work on the first major museum survey devoted to the interdisciplinary practice of artist Marie Watt (Seneca Nation of Indians and German-Scot ancestry).
He previously held positions at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, where he supported permanent collection acquisitions and the organization of wide-ranging exhibitions, commissions, programs, and performances. His writing has been published in exhibition catalogues for the Blaffer, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art, and the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels. Blackwell holds a MA in Art History and The Humanities from the University of Chicago.
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Image: Leslie Martinez
For the Speed, he has iniated a new exhibition series called “Current Speed,” which will focus on emerging and mid-career artists. The first two iterations of this series center on Sky Hopinka (2022) and Kathia St. Hilaire (2023). He is also currently at work on the first major museum survey devoted to the interdisciplinary practice of artist Marie Watt (Seneca Nation of Indians and German-Scot ancestry).
He previously held positions at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, where he supported permanent collection acquisitions and the organization of wide-ranging exhibitions, commissions, programs, and performances. His writing has been published in exhibition catalogues for the Blaffer, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art, and the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels. Blackwell holds a MA in Art History and The Humanities from the University of Chicago.
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Image: Leslie Martinez