The Barnes Foundation has named Connie H. Choi as chief curator and its inaugural vice president for art and education. Choi, who spent nearly a decade at the Studio Museum in Harlem, starts September 8.
The appointment merges the Barnes' curatorial, conservation, research, interpretation, and adult education operations under a single leader — a structural expansion that signals the foundation's intent to reframe how one of the world's most valuable art collections is presented and taught. Choi replaces Nancy Ireson, who departed in November 2025.
The résumé
Choi holds a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia, a B.A. from Yale, and an Ed.M. in arts education from Harvard. She joined the Studio Museum as associate curator in 2017 and was promoted to curator, working closely with director Thelma Golden to build the museum's curatorial identity through and beyond its reopening in fall 2025. Her most visible work was "From Now: A Collection in Context," the permanent collection installation for the Studio Museum's new David Adjaye-designed building, and a solo exhibition of the artist Tom Lloyd. Before Harlem, she led the reinstallation of the Brooklyn Museum's American galleries.
Why it matters
The Barnes houses one of the deepest collections of post-Impressionist and early modern art in the world — Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso — displayed according to founder Albert Barnes' original ensemble arrangements. Choi's background in African diasporic art and community-centered programming (she created the "Find Art Here" initiative placing collection reproductions in Harlem schools and libraries) brings a fundamentally different curatorial lens to a collection built on a century-old installation logic. Barnes president Thom Collins called her "uniquely prepared" to lead, citing her scholarship on the material histories and cultures of the African diaspora.
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