Yesomi Umolu facts for kids

Yesomi Umolu, born in 1983 or 1984, is a British expert who helps organize art shows. She is also a writer. Since 2020, she has been a director at the Serpentine Galleries in London.

Before this, she worked at several art museums in the United States. These include the Walker Art Center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. She also helped lead the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2019.

Yesomi has written for important art magazines like Art in America. She has also spoken about diversity and structural racism in museums. This means she talks about making museums fair and welcoming for everyone.

Yesomi's Early Life and School

Yesomi Umolu was born and grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. Her mother was an English teacher. Her father worked for the government. When she was ten, Yesomi moved to London. As a teenager, she joined an art group at the Tate Modern museum.

Umolu studied architectural design at the University of Edinburgh. She earned a master's degree there. After working as an architect for a few years, she decided to focus on art curation. She was interested in how buildings and spaces affect people and society. In 2010, she earned another master's degree from the Royal College of Art. This degree was in contemporary art curating.

Her Work as an Art Curator

Early in her career, Yesomi helped with programs at Tate Modern. She also worked at Iniva and the Serpentine Gallery. In 2012, she became a special curator at the Walker Art Center in Minnesota, USA. There, she organized the first solo show in the U.S. for artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler. The show was called The Museum of Non Participation: The New Deal. She also worked on other art shows.

Next, Umolu became an assistant curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. This museum is at Michigan State University. She organized programs about global contemporary art. In 2014, she put together John Akomfrah: Imaginary Possessions. This was the first U.S. museum show focusing on the recent work of British artist John Akomfrah.

Other shows she helped create include Focus: Pao Houa Her (2015) and Material Effects. Material Effects looked at the work of six artists from West Africa. An art critic named Sarah Rose Sharp praised this show. She said Umolu did a great job bringing African art to Michigan.

In 2015, the University of Chicago named Umolu its exhibitions curator for the Logan Center for the Arts. Besides her curating work, she also taught about modern visual art. In 2016, she received a special award from the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Her 2018 exhibition, Candice Lin: A Hard White Body, a Porous Slip, was very successful. Hyperallergic magazine named it one of the top 20 U.S. exhibitions that year.

As artistic director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2019, Umolu worked with other curators. They showed the works of over eighty groups and companies. These works were displayed in forty different places across Chicago. Architectural Record magazine said the biennial showed how architecture can be part of power, racism, and inequality. It also noted that the shows were better connected to the city than in past years.

In 2020, Umolu became the director of curatorial affairs and public practice for the Serpentine Galleries in London. In this role, she works to make the Serpentine's programs more inclusive and easy to access for everyone.

Yesomi's Writing

Yesomi Umolu's writing has appeared in many journals. These include Art in America and Afterimage. She has also written and spoken about diversity and structural racism in museums.

In June 2020, Umolu shared an Instagram post. It was called "14 Points on the Limits of Knowledge and Care." In it, she talked about how museums are connected to the history of collecting things from other cultures. She wrote about how museums could recognize this past. She also suggested how they could build new ways of working that are against racism and colonialism. She wrote a similar opinion piece for Artnet News later that month.