The University of Washington School of Art + Art History + Design announces that Jordan Jones has been appointed next Director and Curator of the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, to begin in April 2024. In her role as Director and Curator, Jones will provide curatorial, programming, and administrative leadership and oversight in a newly renovated state-of-the-art exhibition space within the School of Art + Art History + Design at the UW Seattle campus. Jones will begin working on the senior capstone exhibitions during the spring quarter alongside Web Crowell, who has served as the interim Director for the Gallery since the fall of 2023.
Jordan Jones is an arts worker living and working in New York. Before accepting the position, she was the Exhibitions Coordinator at Independent Curators International (ICI), working across all of ICI’s traveling exhibitions. Previously, she was a joint Curatorial Fellow at The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Museum of Modern Art. While at Studio Museum, she worked with the permanent collection and co-organized Harlem Postcards Winter 2020 and Hearts in Isolation, the 2020 Expanding the Walls exhibition. At MoMA, Jones worked in the Department of Drawings and Prints. She has participated in the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program (IATP), the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Museum Education Practicum, and the Center for Book Arts’ Creative Publishing Seminar for Emerging Writers. She has also completed residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Arts Center on Governors Island and The Vermont Studio Center. Jones received a B.A. from Williams College in Studio Art and Comparative Literature.
Jones's appointment is timely, as her first day on the job on April 3 is when the Gallery is hosting the opening reception for the Jacob Lawrence Legacy Residency exhibition featuring the 2024 resident, Simon Benjamin. Established in 2015, the residency is a signature program of the Gallery that invites Black artists at all stages of their careers to spend up to four weeks at the University of Washington developing and exhibiting new work. Benjamin, a Jamaican multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in New York, is in residence from March 24 through April 9, 2024. During his stay, Benjamin is using the Gallery as a studio space to develop new work and engage students in his creative process. He is also collaborating closely with Guest Curator Berette S Macaulay to plan the cumulative exhibition that runs through April 20, 2024, along with a series of on and off-campus activities in support of his practice. A publication archiving Benjamin’s work and visit to Seattle, Washington is planned for late spring.
Press Contact
Leo Carmona, Media Relations Specialist, lcarmona@uw.edu, 206-543-0971