Tyler Blackwell is a writer, curator, and museum leader from Fort Worth, Texas. He currently serves as the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, where he oversees exhibitions, collections, and strategic initiatives focused on art since 1960.
His curatorial practice explores queer and historically underrepresented artistic positions, postwar and contemporary abstraction, and lens-based media that engage broader questions of history, power, memory, and representation. Across more than fifteen years working in encyclopedic museums, university art museums, and kunsthalles, Blackwell has developed artist-centered exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and public programs that connect local audiences to national and international conversations in contemporary art.
At the Speed, he has organized or co-organized exhibitions and projects with artists including Vian Sora (with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Asia Society Texas), Marie Watt, Sky Hopinka, Angel Otero, Kathia St. Hilaire (with the Clark Art Institute), and Amy Sherald, and helped lead the opening of the museum’s $22 million Cressman Family Sculpture Park. Since 2022, he has overseen one of the museum’s most significant recent periods of contemporary collection growth through more than fifty major acquisitions, promised gifts, and long-term loans.
Blackwell is the co-founder and supervisor of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program, a major initiative supported by the Sam Gilliam Foundation. The program brings leading contemporary artists to Louisville to create new work and engage local communities. Year One artists were vanessa german and Eric N. Mack; Year Two features Deana Lawson and Brandon Ndife.
Previously, Blackwell served as Cynthia Woods Mitchell Associate Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, where he organized exhibitions with artists including Monira Al-Qadiri, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Rodney McMillian, Rebecca Morris, Hugh Hayden, Leslie Martinez, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya. He also held positions at the Smart Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. He holds an MA in Art History & the Humanities from the University of Chicago.
In 2026, The Observer named Blackwell a “Curator to Watch.”
His exhibitions and writing have been featured or reviewed by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, e-flux, and other national and international publications.
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Image: Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
His curatorial practice explores queer and historically underrepresented artistic positions, postwar and contemporary abstraction, and lens-based media that engage broader questions of history, power, memory, and representation. Across more than fifteen years working in encyclopedic museums, university art museums, and kunsthalles, Blackwell has developed artist-centered exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and public programs that connect local audiences to national and international conversations in contemporary art.
At the Speed, he has organized or co-organized exhibitions and projects with artists including Vian Sora (with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Asia Society Texas), Marie Watt, Sky Hopinka, Angel Otero, Kathia St. Hilaire (with the Clark Art Institute), and Amy Sherald, and helped lead the opening of the museum’s $22 million Cressman Family Sculpture Park. Since 2022, he has overseen one of the museum’s most significant recent periods of contemporary collection growth through more than fifty major acquisitions, promised gifts, and long-term loans.
Blackwell is the co-founder and supervisor of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program, a major initiative supported by the Sam Gilliam Foundation. The program brings leading contemporary artists to Louisville to create new work and engage local communities. Year One artists were vanessa german and Eric N. Mack; Year Two features Deana Lawson and Brandon Ndife.
Previously, Blackwell served as Cynthia Woods Mitchell Associate Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, where he organized exhibitions with artists including Monira Al-Qadiri, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Rodney McMillian, Rebecca Morris, Hugh Hayden, Leslie Martinez, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya. He also held positions at the Smart Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. He holds an MA in Art History & the Humanities from the University of Chicago.
In 2026, The Observer named Blackwell a “Curator to Watch.”
His exhibitions and writing have been featured or reviewed by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, e-flux, and other national and international publications.
︎ ︎
Image: Molly Zuckerman-Hartung