Curatorial and Advisory Services

Melissa Messina is a nationally recognized arts professional who has developed thought provoking exhibitions, dynamic site-responsive projects, and engaging educational public programming both independently and in leadership positions at museums and non-profit arts organizations. For 20 years, her work with regional, national, and international artists has been presented in the U.S. in Atlanta, Kansas City, Miami, New York, New Orleans, Richmond, Savannah, and Washington, D.C., as well as in Bermuda, France, and Hong Kong. She has lectured extensively, published widely, and her research has been funded by Creative Time and The Andy Warhol Foundation, as well as by fellowships at Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Library, Atlanta, GA, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR.

In addition to serving select public and private clients, she is the curator of the Mildred Thompson Estate. She has also recently served as guest curator at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and was the co-curator of the 2018 and 2020 Bermuda Biennials. In 2017, she co-created Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, an intergenerational exhibition highlighting 21 Black female abstract practitioners that traveled from Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City to The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Solo Exhibitions and Projects

Uta Barth, Lynda Benglis, Lilian Burwell, Nick Cave, Teresita Fernández, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Maya Lin, Whitfield Lovell, Ebony G. Patterson, Alex Prager, Jessica Rankin, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Shinique Smith, Mildred Thompson, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, and Wendy White, among others, as well as site-responsive projects with Natasha Bowdoin, Ingrid Calame, Nicola López, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jason Middlebrook, and Nate Young

Group Exhibitions

  • Let Me Tell you Something, 2020 Bermuda Biennial, and What We Share, 2018 Bermuda Biennial, co-curated, Bermuda National Gallery

  • The Embedded Message: Quilting in Contemporary Art - Gina Adams, Sanford Biggers, Maria Guzmán Capron, Kathryn Clark, Elizabeth Duffy, Aaron McIntosh, Tameka Norris, Amanda Ross-Ho, Sterling Ruby, Hank Willis Thomas, Vadis Turner, Ben Venom, and Saya Woolfalk, co-curated, Visual Arts Center of Richmond

  • Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today - Candida Alvarez, Betty Blayton, Chakaia Booker, Lilian Thomas Burwell, Nanette Carter, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Deborah Dancy, Abigail DeVille, Maren Hassinger, Jennie C. Jones, EJ Montgomery, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Howardena Pindell, Mavis Pusey, Shinique Smith, Gilda Snowden, Sylvia Snowden, Kianja Strobert, Alma Thomas, Mildred Thompson, and Brenna Youngblood, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

  • Conjurers: Artists Imbue the Ordinary - Vanessa German, Marcus Kenney & Shawne Major, Visual Arts Center of Richmond

  • Stretching the Limits: Fibers in Contemporary Painting - Ghada Amer, Tom Burr, Kendell Carter, Nick Cave, Angelo Filomeno, Vibha Galhotra, Sam Gilliam, Sheila Hicks, Emil Lukas, Elaine Reichek, Amanda Ross-Ho, and Shinique Smith, SCAD Museum of Art

  • Room In My Head: Staging Psychological Spaces - Janine Antoni, James Casebere, Gregory Crewdson, Sarah Hobbs, Isaac Julien, Laura Letinsky, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Lori Nix, Laurie Simmons, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems, Savannah College of Art & Design

  • The Spirituality of Place - Mark Bradford, Andy Goldsworthy, Mona Hatoum, Kimsooja, Yoko Ono, and Do-Ho Suh, Savannah College of Art & Design

Exhibition Essays

Candida Alvarez, Alexandre Arrechea, Chakaia Booker, Natasha Bowdoin, Lilian Burwell, Whitfield Lovell, Youssef Nabil, Clare Rojas, Claire Sherman, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Mildred Thompson, Trish Tillman, Vadis Turner, and Nate Young

Additional Achievements and Recognition

  • Tyson Family Scholar at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, Fall 2019

  • Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today catalogue, published 2017; available here

  • Former Artistic Director of Flux Projects, 2017

  • Former Interim Executive Director and Senior Curator at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, 2008-16

  • Recipient of Creative Time | Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant to conduct research on the life and work of mentor Mildred Thompson, 2013

  • Public programming for the Prospect.1 New Orleans biennial (as National Program Director for ArtTable), 2007

  • Part of the inaugurating team that opened the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum; returned as guest curator and speaker, 2005-07