[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/essence-harden-headshot2025.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco has named Essence Harden as senior curator. She will begin in the role on May 18.<\/p>\n
\n\tHarden currently serves as curator of the Expo Chicago art fair. Since 2024, they have also organized the Focus section of Frieze Los Angeles. They will continue in those roles with YBCA\u2019s support. As an independent curator, Harden most recently co-curated the 2025 edition of the Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum.<\/p>\n
\n\tThey previously served as visual arts curator at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and have also organized exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art, Art + Practice in Los Angeles, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and the Oakland Museum of California.<\/p>\n
\n\tA Bay Area native, Harden\u2019s hiring represents a homecoming. In an emailed interview, Harden said they were drawn to YBCA because of its \u201chistory of experimentation and its understanding of contemporary art as part of a larger civic and cultural conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe role of senior curator, which sees them develop public programming and exhibitions, including the 2028 Bay Area Now triennial, offers \u201can opportunity to bring together many of the investments that have shaped my practice: scholarship, interdisciplinary collaboration, public engagement, and long-term relationships with artists,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cEssence rose to the top,\u201d Mari Robles, YBCA\u2019s chief executive, told ARTnews<\/em>, noting their varied experience working in both museums and art fairs. \u201cWe\u2019re looking to build out a bold, dynamic program, one that speaks both to the local, Bay Area community, as well as regionally and nationally. They made it clear that they had kind of that connective tissue to do that work.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRobles said that she was especially drawn to Harden\u2019s roots in the Bay Area and their years spent in Los Angeles and how they could bring those two scenes together in different ways via YBCA\u2019s programming under a concept of the \u201cidentity of the West.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen I speak about the \u2018identity of the West,\u2019\u201d Harden said, \u201cI\u2019m thinking about the West as an important spatial formation within contemporary art: a geography shaped by movement, speculation, cultural exchange, and uneven histories of visibility. Much of my work has considered how art happens in California, and how place is never only physical; it also carries memory, diasporas, imaginings, politics, and possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRobles joined YBCA about 16 months ago and has spent that time plotting the future of the 33-year-old organization, which is equally known for its visual arts and performing arts programs. \u201cYBCA has a space that allows for a kind of nimbleness and flexibility,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re thinking boldly and expansively about our space, and how do we connect it to different audiences. We\u2019re essentially looking to have this be a new era of YBCA that is connected to both this Bay Area identity and also thinks expansively about the West and internationally.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn thinking about YBCA\u2019s future, Harden added that they see it \u201cas both rooted and expansive: grounded in the Bay Area\u2019s artistic, political, and cultural histories, while also connected to broader regional, diasporic, and global conversations. I hope visitors encounter exhibitions and programs that are visually ambitious, intellectually rigorous, and open to complexity. I am interested in projects that give artists\u2019 materials, processes, and forms room to unfold.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/essence-harden-senior-curator-yerba-buena-center-for-the-arts-1234783193\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/essence-harden-headshot2025.jpg?w=1024″] The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco has named Essence Harden as senior curator. She will begin in the role on May 18. Harden currently serves as curator of the Expo Chicago art fair. Since 2024, they have also organized the Focus section of Frieze Los Angeles. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1914287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1914287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1914287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1914287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1914287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}