Dr. Ashley James: "Source/Material: Notes on (Black) Photography and the Referent"

About Ashley James

Ashley James, PhD., joined the curatorial department of the Guggenheim Museum in 2019. Her work merges curatorial practice with an academic background rooted in African American studies, English literature, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Prior to joining the Guggenheim, James served as assistant curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she was the lead curator for the museum’s presentation of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2018–19), organized Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room (2019), and co-curated John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance (2020–21). James also served as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Drawing and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, where her work focused on the groundbreaking retrospectives of Adrian Piper (2018) and Charles White (2018–19), and has held positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at the Yale University Art Gallery, where she co-organized the exhibition Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection (2015). She has contributed essays and research for books, magazines, and catalogues, including publications on Charles White, Palmer Hayden, and Howardena Pindell. James holds a PhD. from Yale University in English literature and African American studies.