Introducing the 2025 Guest Curators

The Armory Show is pleased to share the guest curators for the 2025 edition of the fair, including the three curated gallery sections Focus, Function, and Platform, and the chair of the eighth annual Curatorial Leadership Summit.

 

Focus
Curated by Jessica Bell Brown

 

 

In 2025, Focus will highlight artists from the American South and is curated by Jessica Bell Brown, Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, 

Jessica Bell Brown is a curator, writer, and arts leader, currently serving as the Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. As Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, she worked with leading artists including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Stephanie Syjuco, and Thaddeus Mosley. Her 2022 exhibition, A Movement In Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration co-organized with the Mississippi Museum of Art received national acclaim. Prior to the BMA she has held roles at many institutions: Gracie Mansion Conservancy in New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Creative Time. Her writing has been featured in several artist monographs and catalogues, including Janiva Ellis, Baldwin Lee, Lubaina Himid, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Nari Ward as well as Flash Art, Artforum, Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail.

 

Function
Curated by Ebony L. Haynes

 

 

Function is a new section at The Armory Show which will examine the hierarchies between art and design, exploring how artists engage with design tenants. The inaugural edition curated by Ebony L. Haynes, Director of 52 Walker.

Ebony L. Haynes is a writer and curator from Toronto, Canada. She is presently based in New York where she is senior director at David Zwirner and leads the gallery’s 52 Walker space in Tribeca. Haynes sits on the boards of Artists Space (New York) and the New Art Dealers Alliance. She also runs Black Art Sessions, an online “school” that offers free professional practice classes to Black students worldwide.

 

Platform
Curated by Raina Lampkins-Fielder

 

 

This year, The Armory Show introduces a transformed Platform section, showcasing a focused presentation by the Souls Grown Deep of large-scale works at the center of the fair curated by Raina Lampkins-Fielder. 

Raina Lampkins-Fielder is a Paris-based curator, cultural programmer, and educator. She is the chief curator for Souls Grown Deep, an organization dedicated to promoting the work and legacy of Black American artists from the South. Previously, she was the artistic director and curator of the American Center for Art and Culture (formerly Mona Bismarck American Center) in Paris, served as Associate Director, Helena Rubinstein Chair of Education at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and held posts at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was the lead curator for the exhibition Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Raina has a BA in English from Yale University and an MA in the History of Art from the University of Cambridge, England. Raina has curated many exhibitions, programs, and performance series, served as a juror for artist residency programs, organized and participated in numerous academic conferences and has spoken widely on audience accessibility to the arts in the United States and abroad. 

 

Curatorial Leadership Summit
Chaired by Eric Crosby

 

 

Eric Crosby, Henry J. Heinz II Director, Carnegie Museum of Art & Vice President, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, will chair the eighth annual Curatorial Leadership Summit which will examine practical ways in which curators and gallerists can navigate the current artistic landscape, centering on questions of curatorial commitment and artistic possibility today.  

Eric Crosby is the Henry J. Heinz II Director of Carnegie Museum of Art and Vice President of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh where he supports the work of over 160 dedicated museum staff, stewards an expansive collection across disciplines, and oversees a dynamic artistic program that includes the Carnegie International, the longest running survey of international art in the US. A curator of modern and contemporary art, he has organized and co-organized a wide range of group and monographic exhibitions, including most recently Raymond Saunders: Flowers from a Black Garden and Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery (both 2025). He lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Athens, New York.