Nato Thompson is a curator, author, and entrepreneur whose work bridges contemporary art, politics, and culture. He is the founder of Dreaming in Public, a curatorial and consulting agency, and the co-founder of The Alternative Art School (TAAS), a global digital platform for artists.
From 2007 to 2017, Thompson served as Chief Curator at Creative Time, where he organized large-scale public art projects with artists including Tania Bruguera, Trevor Paglen, Kara Walker, Pedro Reyes, and The Yes Men. He later became the Artistic Director of Philadelphia Contemporary, shaping the institution’s vision of contemporary art as a catalyst for civic life.
Thompson is the author of Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life (2017) and Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Twenty-first Century (2015), and his forthcoming book Making a Life of Art is a poetic field guide for artists navigating precarity, care, and creative survival. His essays and criticism have appeared widely, including in The New York Times’ Visual Culture series.
Over two decades, Thompson has produced major exhibitions, festivals, and residencies that foreground art as a force for imagination, equity, and social transformation.
