Jenelle Porter

Jenelle Porter is a curator and writer. From 2011 to 2015 she was Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, where she organized Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present and Figuring Color: Kathy Butterly, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roy McMakin, Sue Williams, as well as monographic exhibitions of the work of Jeffrey Gibson, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Dianna Molzan, Christina Ramberg, Mary Reid Kelley, Arlene Shechet, and Erin Shirreff. Her exhibitions have twice been honored by the International Association of Art Critics. Most recently, she organized Kay Sekimachi for the Berkeley Art Museum; Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design for the ICA/Boston; and Mike Kelley: Timeless Painting for the Mike Kelley Foundation at Hauser & Wirth, New York. As Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2005–10), Porter organized Dance with Camera and Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay, the first museum surveys of Trisha Donnelly and Charline von Heyl, and numerous other projects. She has authored books and essays on art and artists including Kathy Butterly, Viola Frey, Jeffrey Gibson, Sam Gilliam, Jay Heikes, Margaret Kilgallen, Liz Larner, Liza Lou, Ruby Neri, Stephen Prina, and Matthew Ritchie.

 

Porter is curating a survey for Los Angeles performance art pioneer, Barbara T. Smith, for ICA LA, opening October 2023. Among other book projects, she recently completed An Indigenous Present with artist Jeffrey Gibson (to be released in August 2023), a 450-page compendium that presents the work of 60 Native American and Indigenous visual artists, musicians, writers, architects, historians, and more.