James Voorhies is an art historian, curator, and nonprofit administrator based in the Hudson Valley whose career spans museums, universities, foundations, and cultural nonprofits. His work sits at the intersection of curatorial production, institutional strategy, and fundraising—leading programs that advance organizational missions while building long-term support among individual donors, foundations, and public audiences.

Most recently, James served as Curator-at-Large at the Bass Museum of Art, where he organized eleven exhibitions and major commissions, produced two publications, and worked closely with leadership and development teams to strengthen philanthropic engagement. Prior to this, he was Executive Director of the Tony Smith Foundation in New York, where he oversaw the four-volume Tony Smith Catalogue Raisonné, published by The MIT Press, launched fellowship programs, and commissioned new scholarly and artistic projects supported through foundation partnerships.

Earlier, James served as Dean of Fine Arts at California College of the Arts, leading graduate and undergraduate programs and overseeing faculty governance, curriculum, and multimillion-dollar operating budgets in collaboration with university leadership. Prior to CCA, he was the inaugural John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, an endowed academic directorship embedded within a research university. There, he presented more than seventy exhibitions and public programs, aligned curatorial initiatives with teaching and research, and partnered with Development to secure major-gift and institutional support.

Grounding this work is James’s practice as an art historian and educator. His research in modern and contemporary art focuses on exhibition-making, the institutional conditions that shape it, and the archive as a space for reinterpretation. He holds a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the Ohio State University and is the author of Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form since 1968 (2017) and Postsensual Aesthetics: On the Logic of the Curatorial (2023), both published by The MIT Press. He has taught at Harvard University, California College of the Arts, and Bennington College.