Louisville, Kentucky, United States
Tyler Blackwell is a curator from Fort Worth, Texas. He currently serves as Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum, where he oversees exhibitions, collections, publications, artist commissions, and strategic initiatives focused on art since 1960. His practice explores queer and historically underrepresented artistic positions, postwar and contemporary abstraction, and lens-based media that engage broader questions of history, power, memory, and representation. Across more than fifteen years working within encyclopedic museums, university art museums, and kunsthalles, Blackwell has worked to build ambitious, artist-centered programs that connect local audiences to national and international conversations in contemporary art. At the Speed, he has led or co-organized exhibitions and projects with artists including Vian Sora (co-organized with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Asia Society Texas), Marie Watt, Sky Hopinka, Angel Otero, and Kathia St. Hilaire (co-organized with the Clark Art Institute), while also helping guide and curate the opening of the museum’s $22 million Cressman Family Sculpture Park. Since 2022, he has overseen one of the museum’s most significant recent periods of contemporary collection growth through more than fifty major acquisitions, promised gifts, and long-term loans. He is the co-founder and supervisor of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program at the Speed, a major artist-centered arts + public life initiative supported by the Sam Gilliam Foundation. Before joining the Speed, Blackwell served as Cynthia Woods Mitchell Associate Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum, where he worked closely with the Director to implement a new programmatic vision and organized exhibitions with artists including Monira Al-Qadiri, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Rodney McMillian, Rebecca Morris, Hugh Hayden, Leslie Martinez, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya, among many others. He also held positions at the Smart Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. He holds an MA in Art History & the Humanities from the University of Chicago. In January 2026, he was named a “Curator to Watch” by The New York Observer alongside colleagues at leading museums and institutions around the world. His curatorial projects and writing have been reviewed or featured by publications including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, e-flux, and other national and international publications.
Selected Exhibitions + Projects: Marie Watt career survey Abstract Expressionists: The Women (2026, organized by American Federation of Arts) Abstraction, Continued: Recent Paintings from the Speed Art Museum Collection (2026) Present Tension: Contemporary Art from the Speed Art Museum Collection (2025-Ongoing) Speed Art Museum Cressman Sculpture Park (2023-2025) Current Speed: Vian Sora — Outerworlds (2025-6, co-organized with Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Asia Society Houston; catalogue) Current Speed: Kathia St. Hilaire (2024, co-organized with The Clark Art Institute) Current Speed: Angel Otero / Leslie Martinez (2023) Amy Sherald's Portrait of Breonna Taylor: In the Garden (2023) Rounding the Circle: The Mary & Al Shands Art Collection (2023) (Assistant Curator) Current Speed: Sky Hopinka (2022) Crosscurrents: Contemporary Art from the Speed Art Museum Collection and Beyond (2022, 2024) Co-founder and supervisor of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program, a major artist-centered arts + public life initiative supported by the Sam Gilliam Foundation. Acquisitions, promised gifts, and long-term loans include works by: Anthony Akinbola, Igshaan Adams, Terry Adkins, Rita Ackermann, Hernan Bas, Maria Berrio, Rick Bartow, Diedrick Brackens, Tony Cokes, Jordan Ann Craig, Anthony Cudahy, Sonia Delaunay, Keltie Ferris, vanessa german, Gio Swaby, Patrick Dean Hubbell, Doron Langberg, Simone Leigh, Leslie Martinez, Rodney McMillian, Danielle McKinney, Rebecca Morris, Angel Otero, Ebony G. Patterson, Naudline Pierre, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Sean Scully, Chiffon Thomas, Henry Taylor, Salman Toor, Kay WalkingStick, Jimmy Wright, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others.
Selected Exhibitions + Projects: Jacolby Satterwhite: We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other (2023) Leslie Martinez: The Secrecy of Water (2023) Monira Al Qadiri: Refined Vision (2022) Maria Guzmán Capron: Forma Seductora (2022) Hugh Hayden: Boogey Men (2022, organized by ICA Miami) Molly Zuckerman-Hartung: Comic Relief survey exhibition (2021) Jagdeep Raina: Bonds (2021) Carriers: The Body as a Site of Danger and Desire (2021) Rodney McMillian: Historically Hostile (2020) Paul Mpagi Sepuya survey exhibition (2019, organized by CAM St. Louis) Jacqueline Nova: Creacíon de la Tierra (2019) Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: Otros Usos (2019) Yoshua Okón: Oracle (2019) Rebecca Morris: The Ache of Bright (2019)
Exhibitions: Tang Chang: The Painting That is Painted with Poetry is Profoundly Beautiful (2018)