Lydia Peabody, Curator-at-Large

Serving as Curator-at-Large at the Peabody Essex Museum, Lydia Peabody advises on special projects by contributing expertise in modern and contemporary art. She conceives and curates exhibitions, authors publications, organizes programs and diversifies the museum’s collection through the acquisition of artwork by emerging artists, women artists and artists of color, such as Bethany Collins, Hank Willis Thomas, Steve Locke, Frances F. Denny and Gio Swaby.

Peabody is the curator of long term installation projects Bethany Collins: America, A Hymnal (2023-) and Vanessa Platacis: Taking Place (2019-). She is co-curator of The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming (2021) and contributor to Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love (2021), Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger (2021), and PlayTime (2017). Peabody is coordinating curator of Gio Swaby: Fresh Up (2023), Hans Hofman: The Nature of Abstraction (2019), and the nationally touring Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle (2020-2021) — to which she was a significant contributor to the exhibition and award winning publication. She is currently working on Ethiopia at the Crossroads, opening in the spring of 2024, by overseeing the inclusion of work by renowned contemporary artists such as Julie Mehretu and Aïda Muluneh.

Peabody holds a dual masters degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in modern and contemporary art history, theory, and criticism, and art administration and policy, and a bachelors of arts administration from Simmons University. Peabody is an associate professor of art history at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass. In 2021, she was appointed to the board of The Wolf Kahn Foundation, where she chairs the legacy committee. Her writing can be seen with Demeter Press, Boston Art Review, Hyperallergic and Artforum.

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