Lauren Haynes Appointed to Lead Atlanta Contemporary

- Lauren Haynes brings over two decades of curatorial and leadership experience from prominent institutions, including a decade at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she rose from curatorial assistant to associate curator of the permanent collection. - Her previous roles include serving as Director of Artist Initiatives and Curator of Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art, and most recently, head curator for Governors Island in New York. - Throughout her career, Haynes has curated and organized major exhibitions for renowned artists such as Alma Thomas, Stanley Whitney, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Trenton Doyle Hancock. - She was the institutional curator for the first U.S. presentation of the critically acclaimed exhibition "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power" at Crystal Bridges in 2018. - Haynes's appointment follows a period of leadership transition for Atlanta Contemporary; she succeeds interim director Everett Long, who stepped in after Floyd Hall's 18-month tenure as executive director. - The previous long-term executive director, Veronica Kessenich, stepped down in September 2023 after a decade with the organization, during which she oversaw the transition to free admission and the implementation of a new, independent curatorial model. - Haynes earned her B.A. in Art History from Oberlin College, where her work at the Allen Memorial Art Museum with its then-director, Sharon Patton, an influential scholar of African-American art history, inspired her career path. - She has served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and Creative Capital and is a board member of the Association of Art Museum Curators.