Rashida Bumbray

Rashida Bumbray is director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundations. Since joining Open Society in 2015, Bumbray has organized the Arts Forum: Art, Public Space, and Closing Societies and launched the Soros Arts Fellowship. Bumbray began her curatorial career at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2001-2006). As associate curator at The Kitchen (2006-2012), Bumbray organized critically acclaimed exhibitions and commissions by Leslie Hewitt, Simone Leigh, and Kyle Abraham, among many others. She was guest curator of Creative Time’s public art exhibition Funk, God, Jazz and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn in 2014. Bumbray is an accomplished choreographer whose practice draws from traditional African American vernacular and folk forms. Her performances have been presented by Tate Modern, the New Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harlem Stage, Project Row Houses, and Summer Stage. Bumbray is a 2019 United States Artists Fellow and an Inaugural Civic Practice Artist-in-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.