Museums and cultural institutions around the world are facing unique opportunities and challenges. They are reimagining and reinventing. This series of conversations invites professionals from around the world who are thinking about art and audiences, and learning in different ways.

Julian Cox, Deputy Director & Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, welcomes Asma Naeem, chief curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art, to discuss ideas that are going to guide how culture and our experiences are shaped, created and experienced in the near and distant future.

Asma Naeem is the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art and a specialist in American art and contemporary Islamic art. Before joining the Baltimore Museum of Art, she was curator of Prints, Drawings, and Media Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Her shows there included UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar, co-curated with Taína Caragol, and Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now. The former won the Award for Excellence from the Association of American Museum Curators, and the latter, the Special Achievement award in the 2018 Smithsonian Excellence in Exhibitions awards program. Asma’s work has been published in Artforum, and American Art, among others; Princeton University Press published her first book on silhouettes, and her second book, Out of Earshot: Sound, Technology, and Power in American Art, 1860-1900, is available January 2020 by the University of California, Berkeley Press. Asma holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Maryland, and a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University.

Julian Cox joined the AGO as Deputy Director & Chief Curator in 2018. He leads the curatorial team in designing meaningful art experiences that embrace multiple—and often challenging—points of view. He focuses on exhibition planning in addition to developing the AGO’s significant collections, positioning Toronto and Ontario’s rich artistic landscape in the widest context possible to ensure the Gallery is inclusive and welcoming, and reflects the diversity of the communities we serve. Before joining the AGO, Julian was Chief Curator of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), working across two museums, the de Young and the Legion of Honor. ‌