Dr. Myrtis Bedolla

With more than three decades of leadership as a gallerist, curator, and art advisor, Dr. Bedolla has consistently created platforms that honor artistic excellence while opening pathways for emerging and established artists alike. In 2022, she made history as the first African American curator of the award-winning exhibition The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, presented at the 59th Venice Biennale as part of the European Cultural Centre’s Personal Structures exhibition. The exhibition later returned home to Baltimore, where it was featured at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture and Morgan State University’s James E. Lewis Museum of Art.

Committed to transforming access and representation within the art world, Dr. Bedolla partnered with Christie’s Auction House to spotlight artists from The Afro-Futurist Manifesto, a collaboration that garnered national attention and helped disrupt long-standing inequities in the market. Her advocacy for Black gallerists and artists has been featured in The New York Times, Artnet, and Cultured Magazine, where she has written and spoken powerfully about race, power, and belonging in cultural spaces.

Dr. Bedolla holds an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has received a Governor’s Citation from Governor Wes Moore in recognition of her profound impact on art and culture. She serves in leadership roles with the Association of Art Museum Curators and the AAMC Foundation, the University of Maryland Global Campus Arts Program, and the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City.

Through her curatorial practice, scholarship, and mentorship, Dr. Bedolla exemplifies visionary leadership rooted in service, creativity, and collective progress—modeling for the next generation how art can move communities and shape futures.