Jen Mergel – 2018
Jen Mergel has organized more than 50 exhibitions for wide-ranging museum, academic and public audiences. Her recent research focuses on the protest legacy of Nancy Spero’s under-known (and censored) public art, Boston roots of the Combahee River Collective, Nicole Cherubini’s “4D Feminism,” Exquisite Corpse collaborations between artists during times of pandemic, and historical precedents to ideas of spatial justice. In 2019, Mergel served as Guest Editor-At-Large for Boston Art Review Magazine: The Public Art Issue. In 2018, she was Curator of the Platform section of The Armory Show in New York and presented fifteen site-responsive installations under the theme The Contingent; and in Boston, she presented the award-winning citywide exhibition, Fog x FLO: Fujiko Nakaya on the Emerald Necklace. From 2010-2017, Mergel was the Beal Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), where she was also the Interim Chair of the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art. Previously at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art from 2005-2010, Mergel organized touring survey exhibitions of artists Tara Donovan and Charles LeDray and numerous thematic shows.To advance the curatorial profession, Mergel serves on the board of the international Association of Art Museum Curators and leads national workshops for VoCA (Voices in Contemporary Art). Locally, she serves on advisory boards at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, and the Boston Center for the Arts. Prior curatorial projects include those at the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Hessel Museum at Bard College, the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, and the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Mergel graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University, received her M.A. from Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, is a 2017 Fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, and continues her studies through the Racial Equity Institute. She is Founding Director of the Curatorial Network Accelerator of Boston.