Rehema Barber

Rehema C. Barber is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA), where she amplifies women and BIPOC voices in Modern and Contemporary Art. Since joining the KIA in 2019, her curatorial projects have included the reinstallation of its permanent collection, and the exhibitions A Story to Finding Us: Kyungmi Shin (2024); A Bridge Between Two Worlds: Works by Wu Jian’an (2023); Africa Imagined: Reflections on Modern & Contemporary Art (2022); Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century (co-curator, 2022); and Todd Gray: Crossing the Waters of Space, Time, and History (2021).

Previously, Barber held positions at the Tarble Arts Center, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Memphis, and the Amistad Center at the Wadsworth Atheneum. She has participated in the Art Writing Workshop (AICA-USA), the Getty Leadership Institute, NYU’s Jewish Art Institute, the ICI Curatorial Forum, the Japan Foundation’s Curatorial Exchange Program, and the Saint Louis Art Museum’s Romare Bearden Fellowship.

Barber’s writing has appeared in the Shape of Abstraction and Unmasking Masculinity exhibition catalogues, and Fiber Arts, International Review of African American Art, and the Routledge Reader Series. She holds a B.A. in Art History, with honors, from Roosevelt University and an M.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Articles Related to Rehema Barber

2024-11-25

Center for Curatorial Leadership Announces 2025 Fellows

The Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) is pleased to introduce the 2025 cohort of Fellows. Now in its eighteenth year, the CCL Fellowship is the preeminent leadership program for curators, providing them with the skills and tools needed to become visionary leaders of art museums and cultural institutions worldwide. This year, ... Read More >