Shamim M. Momin is the newly appointed Director and Chief Curator of The Bronx Museum of the Arts, who joins the Museum following over 20 years of curatorial and leadership experience at some of the nation’s premier institutions.

She has served, most recently, as an independent curator and advisor in New York, following her tenure as the Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle). In this role from 2018-2024, she oversaw the Curatorial, Collections, Exhibitions, and Programs departments and, as part of the Directors Team, participated in all strategic planning and organizational decision-making. As Chief Curator, Momin organized numerous exhibitions, including the museum-wide group exhibition In Plain Sight, as well as major commissions by Tala Madani, Gary

Simmons, Kelly Akashi, Hank Willis Thomas, Donna Huanca, Diana Al-Hadid, and others. Prior to joining the Henry, Momin was Director, Curator, and Co-founder of LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division), a leading nonprofit public art organization committed to curating site - and situation-specific contemporary art projects. In that role from 2008-2018, Momin organized over 100 exhibitions, projects, and programs with more than 300 artists, presented across the U.S. and internationally.

Previously, Momin was an Associate Curator of Contemporary Art for twelve years at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), where she co-curated the 2004 and 2008 Whitney Biennials and oversaw the Contemporary Projects series, in addition to serving as Director of the Whitney Museum at Altria, an off-site space, where she was responsible for organizing exhibitions and commissioning more than fifty new projects by emerging artists for both solo and thematic presentations.

She received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010; her dissertation was on postwar collaboration between abstract expressionist painters and modernist architects. Dr. Costello has taught at Hunter College, City University of New York, and has lectured at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Menil Collection and Drawing Institute, Houston.