Susan Thompson

Susan Thompson is Director of Grantmaking and Curatorial Research at VIA Art Fund, a position she has held since 2023.  In this role, she oversees the award of ~$1M annually in grants in support of new commissions of contemporary art in the public realm. From 2020-22, Thompson served as project manager for Simone Leigh: Sovereignty presented at the U.S. Pavilion as part of the 59th Venice Biennale. This project included the momentous Loophole of Retreat: Venice symposium, which gathered 70 presenters and 700 attendees in Venice for three days of talks, performances, film screenings, and conversations. From 2009-2020, she worked as a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, where she organized numerous exhibitions, including the two-part project Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now, Simone Leigh: Loophole of Retreat, and Anicka Yi: Life Is Cheap. She is the author of Ghada Amer: Painting in Revolt; Louise Bonnet: Vagabond; and Daniel Gordon: New Canvas, and has contributed to numerous monographs, exhibition catalogues, and scholarly volumes, with essays on the work of Barkley Hendricks, Mernet Larsen, Deana Lawson, Felipe Baeza, Chiffon Thomas, Paul Chan, and Adam Pendleton, among others. Thompson has also held positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and in Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology. She holds a BA in art history and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MA in modern art from Columbia University.