Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts where she debuted with a critically acclaimed retrospective entitled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen, co-organized with Naomi Beckwith (2018). In 2021, she opened the groundbreaking exhibition The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse that toured nationally. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was a program officer at the National Endowment for the Arts, director of the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where she organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970, Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, and numerous major survey exhibitions. Cassel Oliver is the recipient of fellowships from the Getty Research Institute and the Center of Curatorial Leadership; the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Award; the James A. Porter Book Award from Howard University; the Alain Locke International Arts Award, Detroit Institute of Art; the College Arts Association’s Excellence in Diversity Award; the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; and Brandywine Workshop and Archives’ Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, she was tapped to curate Spotlight, a section for the Frieze Masters Art Fair in London. Cassel Oliver holds an Executive MBA from Columbia University, an M.A. in Art History from Howard University, and a B.S. in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin.
