The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver) has announced that Miranda Lash has been named the new Ellen Bruss Senior Curator. Lash will begin her position at MCA Denver on September 14, 2020.

“Miranda is an exceptionally talented curator who brings to Denver a wealth, breadth, and depth of experience and knowledge, bold ideas, a commitment to community engagement, and a dedication to exhibiting artworks by women, LGBTQ-identifying artists, and artists of color. I have full confidence in her ability to build upon MCA Denver’s renowned exhibitions program and continue to advance the museum as a leader in the field of contemporary art, while also pushing our field even further,” said Nora Burnett Abrams, MCA Denver Mark G. Falcone Director.  

“I’m thrilled to be joining the MCA Denver team, as I have long admired the museum and Nora’s vision of the curatorial program here. We share a belief in the power of art to be a transformative force in opening hearts and minds, and an essential part of any healthy democracy,” said Lash. 

“MCA Denver’s exhibition program has grown over the years in both ambition and impact. Miranda’s appointment as our next Ellen Bruss Senior Curator is a further investment in that growth strategy. The Board of Trustees is ecstatic to have Miranda join our team. We look forward to seeing where she takes the museum and our city,” said Mike Fries, MCA Denver Board of Trustees Chair. 

Lash has most recently served as the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky since 2014. Over the course of her career she has organized more than thirty museum exhibitions, including the touring exhibitions Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art, co-curated with Trevor Schoonmaker (2016), and Mel Chin: Rematch, a retrospective of work by subsequent MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin (2014).

At the Speed, Lash oversaw the inaugural installation of the museum’s contemporary collection in its new North Building designed by Kulapat Yantrasast, which debuted in 2016. Her recent exhibitions there include Yinka Shonibare CBE: The American Library, which celebrated the contributions of immigrants to the United States, co-curated with Alice Gray Stites (2019); Keltie Ferris: *O*P*E*N*, a major survey of abstract paintings and body prints (2018); Breaking the Mold: Investigating Gender at the Speed Art Museum, which focused on evolving perceptions of gender and featured a collaboration with the Faulkner Morgan Archive of LGBTQ history (2018), and BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER, co-curated with Dean Otto (2017). 

"My goal is to bring a wide range of artists to MCA Denver - both global and local. As a Mexican-American who was raised in a bilingual household, I am excited to come work in a city that has a sizable Latinx population and I will work hard to make sure the artists that we exhibit at MCA Denver respond to the demographics of the city,” Lash continued. “I am committed to keeping BIPOC artists and creative collaborators at the forefront of my practice, as I have done at my previous institutions.”

“Miranda Lash is one of the most intelligent and skillful curators I have had the pleasure of working with,” said artist Dario Robleto. “Rarely have I engaged with a curator, or anyone, with such a deep ability to hear—to thoughtfully and empathetically absorb the nuance of another's ideas. This skill, merged with innovative curation, is crucial to working with artists and fundamental to the health of our museums and broader society today. She will be a vital addition to Denver's art community.”

“As an artist with a young practice working with Miranda has been incredible. She makes space and challenges her colleagues to do the same through her practice. And in times like these, where the nation’s museums are being forced to question their participation in shaping history and serving all their constituents, this matters,“ said artist Ebony G. Patterson.

Central to Lash’s curatorial practice has been a commitment to exploring regional complexities and the layered histories specific to different places. Southern Accent, which featured the work of sixty artists, received wide acclaim for its multifaceted inquiry into the evolving understanding of the American South. The exhibition presented an in-depth approach to the South as a fluctuating concept with an undeniably dark past and rich cultural output, ultimately capturing how the South has shifted (and at times stayed the same) in recent decades. In conjunction with the exhibition, Lash organized a day-long symposium in 2017 on the removal of confederate monuments and artists’ role in memorializing the past, and as well as the concert Southern Sounds: Women in Contemporary Southern Music.

Prior to the Speed, she was the New Orleans Museum of Art’s (NOMA) first curator of modern and contemporary art. During her tenure Lash’s adventurous exhibition program featured projects such as Rashaad Newsome: King of Arms, which included a procession of Mardi Gras Indians and vogue dancers (2013); Camille Henrot: Cities of Ys, the first solo exhibition in the U.S. for the Venice Biennale Silver Lion awardee and the culmination of a three-year collaboration with the United Houma Nation (2013); Quintron and Miss Pussycat: Parallel Universe Live at City, which featured a recording studio in the galleries and resulted in an album released by Goner Records (Sucre du Sauvage, 2011); and Swoon: Thalassa, which showcased a monumental sculpture suspended in NOMA’s neoclassical Grand Hall (2011). While at NOMA Lash also oversaw the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, one of the premier outdoor sculpture gardens in the United States. 

Lash’s essays have been published in the Harvard journal Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, the anthology Baroque Tendencies in Contemporary Art, New American Paintings, The Oxford American, and most recently, the Andy Warhol Museum’s Andy Warhol: Revelation. Her upcoming text on curation will appear in Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Storytellers of Art History, edited by Sharon Louden, Alpesh Kantilal Patel, and Yasmeen Siddiqui. 

Lash has been named a Clark Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, a past consultant for Creative Capital, and was one of the co-founders of the arts criticism website Pelican Bomb. She was a member of the Artistic Director’s Council for the international triennial Prospect New Orleans for Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp (2017-2018). Lash currently serves on the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. 

Prior to the New Orleans Museum of Art, Lash worked as a curatorial assistant at The Menil Collection. A native of Los Angeles, Lash received her BA in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University, and her MA in Art History from Williams College.