Lauren Schell Dickens

Lauren Schell Dickens is senior curator at the San José Museum of Art. Since joining the museum in 2016 as curator, she has organized major exhibitions including Our whole, unruly selves (2021), Undersoul: Jay DeFeo (2019), With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino and Tommie Smith (2019), Other Walks, Other Lines (2018), and The House Imaginary (2018). She has organized solo exhibitions and projects with Diana Al-Hadid, Sofia Cordova, Woody de Othello, Brendan Fernandes, Aislinn Thomas, and Lara Schnitger, among others, and co-organized the major survey of Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World (2019), which toured nationally. She’s currently organizing the first major exhibition of Kelly Akashi’s practice, which will tour nationally. Prior to SJMA, Dickens held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Art and Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. She received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.A. from Columbia University. Her public project with The Propeller Group and El Mac was awarded the 2018 Creative Impact Award by the city of San José. She is a 2019 Warhol Curatorial Research Fellow and recipient of the Fellows of Contemporary Art 2022 Curators Award.