Culture Type has published its annual list of new appointments among museum curators and arts leaders for the first half of 2025, highlighting two dozen hires and promotions at major institutions. Notable appointments include Deana Haggag as program director for arts and culture at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ann Collins Smith as chief curator at the New Orleans Museum of Art (the first Black American in a full-time curatorial role there), and Vincent van Velsen as head of exhibitions at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. The list also features curators such as Alisa Chiles at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Brittany Webb at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
This list matters because it tracks institutional representation of Black curators and arts leaders during a turbulent period for the U.S. arts sector, marked by federal funding cuts, personnel reductions at the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, and threats to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The appointments at major foundations like Mellon and Knight underscore the critical role of philanthropic support in sustaining museum exhibitions, curatorial opportunities, and arts programming amid political and economic uncertainty. The list also signals progress in diversifying leadership at historically homogeneous institutions.