Legacy Russell

Legacy Russell is a curator and writer. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Executive Director & Chief Curator of the experimental arts institution The Kitchen.

Formerly, she was the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Russell holds an MRes with Distinction in Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London with a focus in Visual Culture. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. Russell’s written work, interviews, and essays have been published internationally.

Recent exhibitions include Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art (2024-25, The Kitchen, in collaboration with the Schomburg Center and MOCAD); Harmony Holiday: BLACK BACKSTAGE (2024, The Kitchen); Matthew Lutz-Kinoy: Filling Station (2023, The Kitchen); Samora Pinderhughes: GRIEF (2022, The Kitchen); satellite projects The Condition of Being Addressable (ICA LA, 2022); The New Bend (Hauser & Wirth, 2022-2023); Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon and madison moore: Nightlife-in-Residence (2022, The Kitchen) Projects: Kahlil Robert Irving (2021), Projects: Garrett Bradley (2020), and Projects: Michael Armitage (2019), all with The Studio Museum in Harlem in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art; (Never) As I Was, This Longing Vessel, and MOOD with Studio Museum in partnership with MoMA PS1; Thomas J Price: Witness (2021); Dozie Kanu: Function (2019), Chloë Bass: Wayfinding (2019), and Radical Reading Room (2019) at The Studio Museum in Harlem; LEAN with Performa's Radical Broadcast online (2020) and in physical space at Kunsthall Stavanger (2021).

She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellow, a recipient of the 2021 Creative Capital Award, a 2022-23 Pompeii Commitment Digital Fellow, a 2023 Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellow, a 2024-25 Lunder Institute for American Art Fellow, and a 2025-2026 Obama Leader awardee.

Her first book is the critically acclaimed "Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto" (Verso Books, 2020). Her second book, "Black Meme," (Verso Books, 2024) was shortlisted for the 2024 The National Book Critics Circle Award.

Russell's first chapbook of poems is "Gay Pompeii," from GenderFail, published in 2025.

Russell was appointed to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's Arts & Culture Transition Committee for New York City in late 2025, bringing her expertise in contemporary art and institutions to help shape NYC's future cultural policy alongside other leading arts figures.