Curator of Time-Based Media and Special Projects
Art historian Charlotte Ickes joined the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2019. As curator of time-based media art and special projects, she stewards the museum’s growing time-based media art collection and organizes exhibitions of contemporary art. With Josh T Franco, Ickes is co-curating Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return, opening at the Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art in October 2024. With Taína Caragol, she is co-curating the 2025 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. She has co-curated Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass (2023–2026), served as a member of the curatorial team for Kinship (2022–2024), commissioned Birthright (2022), a new performance by Maren Hassinger, and co-curated with Saisha Grayson and Marina Isgro “Viewfinder: Women’s Film and Video from the Smithsonian,” a yearlong virtual screening and conversation series (2021).
Prior to joining the Portrait Gallery, Ickes was the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She has organized exhibitions and public programs at institutions and cultural spaces that include Anthology Film Archives, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Slought, and Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago.
From 2012 to 2013, Ickes participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. She received her BA from Yale University and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
