A curator and non-fiction writer, Catherine’s practice expands from memoir and historical narrative to the visual arts. She offers a specialty in African photographies, African and African-American contemporary art; textile traditions; fashion and costume and it’s related trade histories.
Catherine McKinley is a former Fulbright Scholar and a critically acclaimed author & curator. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (B.A. Literature), where she taught Non-Fiction, and New York University (M.A. Art), her practice expands from memoir and the historical narrative to the visual and material arts. Recent exhibitions include Conflict & Skin at Gallatin Gallery, NYU, which explored the 1904 German – Herero War and resulting genocide, and the persistence of Victorian design in Heroro women’s expression of trauma, resistance and indigeneity. Aunty! African Women in the Frame, 1870 to the Present, Selections from the McKinley Collection, which debuted at United Photo Industries, Dumbo, Brooklyn in 2019. She lives in New York City.
Catherine provides freelance consulting and editorial services, including project development, grant writing and editorial services for arts and literary organizations, individual artists, commercial authors and academic institutions.