Bio

Guyanese-born Grace Aneiza Ali is a Curator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and the Department of Art History’s Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies Program at the College of Fine Arts, Florida State University (FSU). She is also affiliated faculty with the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) Center. She is a 2024-25 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at The Huntington in Los Angeles. Ali is Editor-in-Chief of the College Art Associations’ Art Journal Open and member of the international Board of Advisors for British Art Studies.

As a curator-scholar of contemporary art of the Global South, her curatorial research practice examines the conceptual links and slippages at the nexus of art and migration. Ali also specializes on art of the Caribbean Diaspora with particular attention to her homeland Guyana. Her teaching focuses on courses on curatorial practice, curatorial activism, art and migration, arts activism, art and social change, global contemporary art, and art of the Caribbean Diaspora.

Her book, Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020), explores the art and migration narratives of women of Guyanese heritage. Her essays on contemporary art have been published in Arts, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, Wasafiri, Transition Magazine (Harvard University), Small Axe, and Nueva Luz Photographic Journal.

Prior to joining FSU, she taught in the M.A. in Arts Politics program as a Provost Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (NYU), and also served as affiliated faculty with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute. She finished a tenure as Curator-at-Large for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) in New York. She developed the organization’s first Curatorial Fellowship in Afro-Caribbean Art and launched a thriving public program series, Curators in Conversation, gathering global curators and artists to discuss urgent issues of equity and inclusion affecting museums and the curatorial field.  For her work with CCCADI, she was selected for ARTNews ‘The 2022 Deciders’ recognizing those “contributing to the cultural conversation in a pointed way—and moving the conversation forward.”

She is the recipient of the following fellowships and grants that have generously supported her curatorial projects, research, and scholarship: NYU Provost Fellowship, Fulbright Fellowship, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellowship, Ronald E. McNair Scholar, NYU Henry M. MacCracken Fellowship, NYU Dean’s Faculty Grant, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Grant. She is an alumni of the Association of Art Museum Curators Professional Alliance of Curators of Color (PACC) Fellowship and a member of Independent Curators International alumni and the British Art Network.

She is founder and curator of Guyana Modern, an online platform for contemporary arts and culture of Guyana and founder and editorial director of OF NOTE Magazine — an award-winning nonprofit arts journalism initiative reporting on the intersection of art and activism. Her curatorial projects and scholarship have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, ArtNews, Wasafiri, Contemporary &, Ms. Magazine and GOOD Magazine, among others.

Grace currently serves on the Board of Advisors for the not-profit arts organization, Art at a Time Like This, which supports artists and curators in the 21st century presenting art in direct response to pressing global issues and on the Academic Advisory Board for The Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies, a peer-reviewed publication centering the study of indentureship and its importance to world history. She is a proud mentor for Girls Write Now, a leader in arts education, writing and mentoring for underserved and immigrant girls in New York City. She has been named a ‘Global Shaper’ by the World Economic Forum and has been an invited speaker to its Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. She has been named a ‘Creative Trailblazer’ by the Jahajee Sisters an organization led by Indo-Caribbean women and committed to creating a safe and equitable society for women and girls.

She earned a M.A. in Africana Studies from New York University and a B.A. in English Literature with a concentration in African Diaspora Literature and a Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Grace migrated from Guyana to the United States with her family when she was fourteen years old.

CCCADI, based in East Harlem has been a pioneer in advocating for historically marginalized communities through different kinds of programs and initiatives. [Under curator-at-large Grace Aneiza Ali], the Afro-Caribbean Art Curatorial Fellowship continues the center’s goal to diversify art institutions, increase cultural equity, and connect the African diaspora by fostering networks at home and abroad. The Curators in Conversation virtual talk series has brought Afro-Caribbean curators into critical debates, and digital exhibitions such as On Protest and Mourning have reflected on concerns touching on Black Lives Matter protests, ongoing grappling with unjust conditions, and avoidable catastrophe during a global pandemic. —ARTNews ‘The Deciders’ 2022