Writer, curator & cultural advisor
Art, culture, and living a creative, considered life.
I write, curate, and bring people into conversation with art, ideas, and the world around us.
Over the past twenty years, I have worked across cultural, political, and institutional life, helping people and organizations think through what they want to say, what they want to build, and how to bring others into the conversation.
Today, I continue to bring that same curiosity and consideration to my own creative practice. I’m writing, developing exhibitions, and paying even closer attention to the questions I spend my life exploring.
Some of those questions are about art, culture and public life: how we encounter it, understand it, and live with it. Others are about the standards we develop for ourselves, the places and communities we create, and how to build a life and work that reflects what we actually value.
These interests find different expressions through my work.
My experience includes corporate and digital communications in finance, communications leadership for the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressman Adam Smith, public engagement at the New York Public Library and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and arts communications at Sutton. Through my own practice at ElevenThirtySix, I have worked with more than thirty cultural organizations including The Africa Center, the International Center of Photography, and Socrates Sculpture Park.
I hold a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from UNC Chapel Hill, an MA in Strategic Communications from American University, and a Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from Harvard Extension School, with executive education from Duke University and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
The ideas I’m considering, questioning, and working through. On art, culture, and living a creative, considered life.
Perspective
Two years ago, I wrote about the struggle between democracy and autocracy. The closing of the Kennedy Center shows why culture was always going to be one of its most consequential battlegrounds.
What happens when even our most prominent institutions can no longer hold the line?
Read the essay ↗Reading Notes, No. 1
On the courage of your mistakes, and the question I am sitting with this season.
Read the essay ↗From the archive
On going quiet, the end of the information age, and the one thing no machine can do in your place.
Read the essay ↗From the archive
What ten days in India taught me about surrender, instinct, and the life that’s already yours.
Read the essay ↗My work extends from the page into exhibitions, gatherings, and strategic conversations with individuals and institutions.
An art house · Dakar
A contemporary art house rooted in Dakar and open to the world.
Through exhibitions, conversations, and gatherings, Galerie36 presents African and diasporic artists and creates space to spend time with their work—and with one another. I am developing it as a place where artists feel supported and people can build a deeper relationship with creativity.
Explore Galerie36 ↗Cultural strategy & advisory
My cultural strategy and advisory practice for individuals and institutions.
I help clients think through exhibitions, cultural programs, public narratives, and consequential creative decisions. Engagements include strategic planning intensives, cultural strategy audits and advisory, and ongoing implementation counsel.
Explore advisory engagements ↗
For editorial inquiries, conversations, and considered collaborations, you can reach me directly.
ak@ayofemikirby.comReading notes, essays, and the questions I’m sitting with. I’m happy to share them with you.
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