MAKEDA BEST

Makeda Best is the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums. Her exhibitions include Time is Now – Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America (2018) and Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art (2019). She has written for numerous catalogs and journals, most recently for the National Gallery of Poland, Kunsthalle Mannheim, The Archives of American Art Journal, The James Baldwin Review and the Rhode Island School of the Design’s Manual. Her forthcoming book is Elevate the Masses – Alexander Gardner, Photography and Democracy in Nineteenth Century America (2020). She is co-editor of Conflict, Identity and Protest in American Art (2016). She has performed extensive service for the field, including as a juror for CENTER Santa Fe, as a reviewer at FotoFest and PhotoNola. She was most recently the 2020 juror for the Annual Exhibition of the Photographic Resource Center in Boston. She serves on the board of the CASE Art Fund. She holds a graduate degree in studio photography from the California Institute of the Arts and a PhD from Harvard University.

Reviewing Saturday, September 12 and Sunday, September 13