Maya Allison

Maya Allison is Chief Curator at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), and founding Executive Director of The Art Gallery at New York University Abu Dhabi. She is Curator of the National Pavilion of the UAE to Venice for 2022. Previous posts include curatorial roles at Brown University, and The RISD Museum. She also directed the annual international new media showcase Pixilerations, all in Providence, Rhode Island (USA). She holds degrees from Columbia University, Reed College, and was awarded a curatorial research fellowship at Brown University’s Center for Public Humanities.

Allison’s curatorial specialisations intersect two areas: artistic communities, and installation art. Her most recent project, Speculative Landscapes (NYUAD Art Gallery, 2019) gathered four rising UAE-based artists who work in immersive, experimental installation. Her curatorial projects that included editing book-length publications include Wunderground: Providence, 1995 to the Present (Curatorial Assistant, RISD Museum, 2006), Slavs and Tatars: Mirrors for Princes (Curator, JRP Ringier/NYUAD Art Gallery, 2015), Diana Al-Hadid: Phantom Limb (Curator, Skira / NYUAD Art Gallery, 2016), But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Art Community, 1988-2008 (Lead Curator, NYUAD Art Gallery, 2017), and Zimoun (Curator, NYUAD Art Gallery, 2019). Outside the university, she has guest-curated a number of projects in the UAE, including Artists and the Cultural Foundation: The Early Years (Lead Curator, with book publication, Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi, 2018), a 30-year survey of 18 UAE artists.