Park Profile: Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas

Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas is the Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park. Her curatorial career includes exhibitions, outdoor installations, and residencies with artists like Tavares Strachan, Matthew Barney, Diana Al-Hadid, Yvette Mayorga, and Andrea Carlson.

Garcia-Maestas’ work centers artist-driven projects and initiatives and takes an invigorated approach to exhibition programming and the support and presentation of contemporary artists, with a vision to expand organizations’ mission, values, and reach. Her research and curatorial interests have primarily been devoted to exploring themes of decolonial resistance, displacement, and cultural heritage in the United States and the Americas. Her achievements at the Momentary include the launch of the new contemporary art space in 2020, the development of the outdoor art program, and a robust exhibition program focused on site-specific architectural interventions. While at the Denver Art Museum she worked on several major exhibitions, most notably Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Place, an exhibition featuring site-specific installations by 13 Latinx and Chicanx artists examining themes of displacement and visibility. In 2015, she co-created the Biennial Ambassadors artist residency program, a collaboration between the Biennial of the Americas and SOMA Mexico City.

Garcia-Maestas’ curated exhibitions include Diana Al-Hadid: Ash in the Trade Winds, In Some Form or Fashion, Esteban Cabeza de Baca: Let Earth Breathe, and A Divided Landscape , co-curated with Neville Wakefield, Yvette Mayorga: What a Time to Be, and recently Firelei Baez: To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction, organized by ICA Boston and the Momentary. Garcia-Maestas has previously held curatorial positions at the Denver Art Museum, the Biennial of the Americas, and MCA Denver.

Garcia-Maestas was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico.