Kristen Hileman is an independent curator and educator. She began her career as a curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and then served as the Head of the Contemporary Department at The Baltimore Museum of Art. She continues to organize exhibitions for numerous institutions while writing and lecturing about contemporary art and documenting and advocating for artists’ legacies. She is currently a Critic at the Yale School of Art and Critic-in-Residence at the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, as well as core faculty for the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program, a tuition-free seminar program in New York City.

Hileman’s curatorial practice combines a passion for celebrating under-recognized and regional artists and a desire to innovate within the museum and exhibition field. She has organized important exhibitions surveying the careers of Maren Hassinger, Connie Imboden, Jo Smail, Anne Truitt, and John Waters, producing major catalogues on Truitt and Waters. She has also overseen film and architectural commissions by Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, Sarah Oppenheimer, and Tomás Saraceno; and worked with John Baldessari, Cai Guo-Qiang, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, Candida Höfer, Meleko Mokgosi, Dario Robleto, Sterling Ruby, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among other leading artists.