Amy Smith-Stewart has organized nearly one hundred exhibitions across museums, collections, galleries, and temporary spaces. Her writing has appeared in books and catalogues published by institutions and publishers including the Bates College Museum of Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Charta, Colby College Museum of Art, DelMonico Books, Gregory R. Miller & Co., KW Institute for Contemporary Art, MoMA PS1, Revolver Publishing, Rizzoli, Taschen, and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. As both curator and writer, Smith-Stewart is a dedicated advocate for emerging and overlooked artists, as well as for erased and forgotten histories.
She currently serves as the Diana Bowes Chief Curator at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, where she has organized fifty-five exhibitions and projects since 2013. She launched Aldrich Projects, a series that presents a single work or focused body of work by a singular artist, and co-created The Aldrich Box, a program that commissions artists to produce original works designed to travel beyond the museum’s walls. Her visionary approach has brought artists to The Aldrich at pivotal moments in their careers, including solo museum debuts by Uman, Nickola Pottinger, Hangama Amiri, Genesis Belanger, Layo Bright, Milano Chow, Lucia Hierro, Michelle Lopez, Hayal Pozanti, Jessi Reaves, Eva LeWitt, Sara Cwynar, Chiffon Thomas, Elif Uras, B. Wurtz, and others. She has also organized major survey exhibitions with artists such as Martha Diamond, Harmony Hammond, Loie Hollowell, Raven Halfmoon, Karla Knight, Suzanne McClelland, Ruth Root, Frank Stella, and Jackie Winsor.
Smith-Stewart is the founder of the nomadic curatorial project Smith-Stewart, which operated as a gallery on the Lower East Side of New York City from 2007 to 2009. She began her career as a curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), where she organized nineteen exhibitions and projects, including first solo museum presentations with Aleksandra Mir, Adrian Paci, Mika Rottenberg, and Taryn Simon, as well as major group exhibitions such as Day Labor and Greater New York 2005. From 2006 to 2007, she served as Curatorial Advisor for the Mary Boone Gallery, where she organized group exhibitions introducing a new generation of artists. She has also curated exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum and served as Guest Curator for the Peter Norton Collection from 2006 to 2008.
In addition to her curatorial work, Smith-Stewart has held teaching positions at the School of Visual Arts (MFA Fine Arts program) and Sotheby’s Institute of Art (MA Contemporary Art program).
