Maura Reilly

Reilly's interest in art began in college when she took a class in art history.[1] She earned a B.A. from Providence College in 1990.[2] She has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts in New York where worked under the supervision of Linda Nochlin.[3][4] Reilly has held positions at Arizona State University, the American Federation of Arts,[3] as a professor and chair of art theory at the Queensland College of Art at the Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia,[5] and as executive director of the Linda Pace Foundation.[1] Reilly was the founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.[6] She then became the executive director and chief curator of the National Academy of Design.[7] In 2022 Reilly was named directory of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University.[8]

In 2007, Reilly's first exhibition at the Sackler center was Global Feminisms which brought together works from 87 women,[9] and presented the work of women in the context of society at large and not a sole focus on gender.[10]^: 176 Josephine Withers described the show as placing the exhibit beyond "a priori ideas about what feminist art should look like".[11]^: 86 Other exhibits that Reilly coordinated at the Sackler include a 2008 show on Ghada Amer.[12][13]

In 2015, Reilly organized an all-women issue of ARTnews, in which she offered up statistics demonstrating systemic sexism in the art world.[14][7][15] Her work on curatorial activism, as expanded upon in her book Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating,[16] is cited by others as a means to teach the need for increased visibility of marginalized artists.[17][18][19] Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating was listed as one of the Top 10 Best Art Books of 2018 from the New York Times.[20]

In 2019 she wrote about the lack of representation of women artists in the reinstallation of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art.[21] Exhibits curated by Reilly have been reviewed by arts media across the globe, including, most recently, her exhibition Wandamba yalungka/Winds change direction, which was reviewed in 2021 by The Brooklyn Rail.[22] Reilly and Linda Nochlin co-curated Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art, which was the first show at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art; the show was reviewed by the popular press including The New Yorker magazine[23] and the New York Times.[24]

• Global feminisms : new directions in contemporary art. Maura Reilly, Linda Nochlin, Brooklyn Museum, Davis Museum and Cultural Center. London: Merrell Publishers. 2007. ISBN 978-1-85894-390-9. OCLC 79256724.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)[25]
• Reilly, Maura (2010). Ghada Amer. Ghada Amer. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co. ISBN 978-0-9800242-0-3. OCLC 549145576.[26]
• Nochlin, Linda (2015). Women artists : the Linda Nochlin reader. Maura Reilly. New York, New York: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-23929-2. OCLC 892891670.[27]
• Reilly, Maura (2015-05-26). "Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
• Reilly, Maura (2018). Curatorial activism : towards an ethics of curating. Lucy R. Lippard. London: WW Norton. ISBN 978-0-500-23970-4. OCLC 992571921.[28]

In 2005, Reilly won the Future Leadership Award from ArtTable,[29] and in 2006 she received the President Award from the Women's Caucus of Art.[30] Reilly was the guest judge for the 2012 churchie emerging art prize.[31]

• Maura Reilly publications indexed by Google Scholar