Deborah Cullen

Deborah Cullen, PhD, is Director & Chief Curator of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in the City of New York. She has overseen the gallery’s expansion into the new Lenfest Center for the Arts, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, on Columbia’s rising Manhattanville campus at 125th Street, west of Broadway.

At Columbia, Cullen founded and curated Uptown, a triennial of contemporary art initiated by the Wallach in 2017, and taking place at collaborative sites across northern Manhattan. She also recently curated Passages: Robert Blackburn, a retrospective on the Jamaican-American printmaker and the focus of her 2002 dissertation for CUNY Graduate Center (The Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, 2014). She is currently organizing Robert Blackburn & Modern American Printmaking (forthcoming, 2020) for the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Cullen has also curated Interruption: The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana, 2013) and The Hive: The Third Poligraphic Trienal of San Juan (Puerto Rico, 2012).

Prior to Columbia University, Cullen served at El Museo del Barrio, New York, for over 15 years. Her projects included Retro/Active: The Work of Rafael Ferrer (2010, as well as a 2012 monograph for UCLA); Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis (2009), and Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas 1960-2000 (2008). She also co-founded and co-curated the first four editions of El Museo’s contemporary art bienal, The S-Files (1999, 2000, 2002, 2004).

Deborah Cullen is widely published, including texts for retrospective exhibition catalogs on Laura Aguilar, Marisol, ASCO, and others. She has received an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award, a J. Paul Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship, and a Faith Ringgold “Anyone Can Fly” Foundation Professional Scholars Grant.