Asma Naeem

Asma Naeem (she/her) is the Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She previously served as the Museum’s Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator, and has organized exhibitions on the work of such artists as Candice Breitz, Isaac Julien, Salman Toor, and Valerie Maynard. Prior to the BMA, she held curatorial positions at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where she presented, among other shows, an early career retrospective of the work of Titus Kaphar, and an historical and contemporary exploration of the silhouette through the lens of gender, race, and technology. She has written widely on American art, contemporary art, critical race theory, the South Asian diaspora, and museum studies. Her book, Out of Earshot: Sound, Technology, and Power in American Art, 1847–1897, was published by University of California Press in 2020.

She is currently organizing a sweeping social and art history of the hip hop movement both as an American and global phenomenon (forthcoming, 2023), and a transatlantic, multigenerational exploration of the Partition of British India in terms of trauma, dignity, and futurity (TBA). Naeem holds a BA in art history and political science from the Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in art history from the University of Maryland.