Maya Allison

Maya Allison is founding Executive Director of the Art Galleries at New York University Abu Dhabi, where she is also Chief Curator and Senior Research Scholar. In her curatorial practice, she focuses on two areas: contemporary installation art, and the role of community in artistic innovation. With her exhibitions she has edited and authored a number of books including the first monographs on Syrian-American sculptor Diana Al-Hadid, and Swiss installation artist Zimoun, as well as multiple group exhibition catalogues. In the UAE, she has produced a series of studies of UAE’s art history, including But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Art Community, 1998-2008 (NYUAD Art Gallery, 2017, book: Akkadia Press), Artists and the Cultural Foundation: The Early Years (The Cultural Foundation, 2018, book: DCT Abu Dhabi), and Speculative Landscapes (NYUAD Art Gallery, 2019). Her most recent book, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset (Kaph Books, 2022) was published on the occasion of the Venice Biennale 2022, for which she was curator of the UAE Pavilion. Before relocating to the UAE in 2012, she spent 8 years in Providence, Rhode Island, where she held curatorial posts in The Museum of Rhode Island School of Design (“RISD”), then the Brown University Bell Gallery, and served as Exhibition Director of Pixilerations, an annual city-wide exhibition of experimental, technology-based art.