James Voorhies is a curator and advisor with extensive experience in curating, publishing, strategic planning, and fundraising in the visual arts for internationally renowned museums, academies, and non-profits. His curatorial and administrative work has centered on the organization of exhibitions and supervision of commissions with his editorial leadership focused on planning and realizing publications from catalogue raisonnés, artist monographs and exhibition catalogues, to authoring books.
During his tenure, initially as Executive Director of the Tony Smith Foundation, and finally as Editor of the Tony Smith Catalogue Raisonné Project, James initiated research and public programs that placed the legacy of the modernist artist in dialogue with contemporary art and design, including editing and publishing the Tony Smith Catalogue Raisonné with MIT Press.
Prior to the Tony Smith Foundation, he served in academic leadership positions at California College of the Arts from 2016 to 2021. From 2013 to 2016, he held the endowed directorship of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University where he organized more than 70 exhibitions and public programs while lecturing for the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies and the Graduate School of Design.
From 2010 to 2013, James taught art history and critical theory at Bennington College, and from 2006 to 2011 he served as Director of Exhibitions at Columbus College of Art and Design.
James served as Chief Curator of the Bass Museum of Art where he provided the artistic direction for a curatorial program that coalesced the museum's contemporary art exhibitions, permanent historical collection, commissioned projects, education, and publications into a cohesive vision.
Based in Hudson, New York, James Voorhies holds a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the Ohio State University. He is author of Postsensual Aesthetics: On the Logic of the Curatorial and Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form since 1968, both published by MIT Press.
