nico w. okoro

nico w. okoro is an independent arts consultant, curator, educator, and writer based in New Haven, CT. An advocate for artists of the global majority, she works across sectors to build equitable representation within the canons of modern and contemporary art, and nurture reciprocity between artists, communities, and cultural institutions. 

Through her consultancies, nico delivers cultural strategy to artist-entrepreneurs, arts and culture organizations, philanthropic foundations, and government agencies. She’s supported museums on mounting large-scale exhibitions and programs, foundations on deepening their support of individual artists and culturally-specific nonprofits, and artist-entrepreneurs on strategic planning, business development, and start-up operations. nico has recently supported strategic initiatives at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Arizona State University Art Museum, the Association of Art Museum Curators, the Legacy Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. She is also founder and principal of the bldg fund, llc, a collaborative engine for the cultivation of place-based projects envisioned by artists, entrepreneurs, and neighbors in New Haven.

As an independent curator, nico has organized exhibitions for contemporary art museums, galleries, and fairs. Upcoming exhibitions include Against Dystopia at Diane Rosenstein Gallery (Fall 2024). Recent exhibitions include Origins at Orchid Gallery (Summer 2024); Gather at Orchid Gallery (Spring 2024); Century: 100 Years of Black Art at MAM at the Montclair Art Museum (Winter 2024), co-curated with Adrienne L. Childs; the virtual exhibition, Embodied Knowledge (Winter 2023); Made Visible: Freedom Dreams at Creative Arts Workshop (Winter 2023); Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere: Freedom Dreams in Contemporary Art at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (Winter 2022); RED at Welancora Gallery (Summer 2021); Home Body at Sapar Contemporary (Spring 2021); and Treacherous with Old Magic at Future Fairs (Winter 2020). 

An arts educator, nico served as a visiting critic at the Yale School of Art (2022-23), and is a former adjunct professor of art at Brown University (2021), Barnard College (2017-19), and Hartford Art School (2016-21), where she taught at the intersections of art history, creative and cultural entrepreneurship, and museum studies. She’s also partnered with Arizona State University, BOMB Magazine, Creative Capital, The Guggenheim, and HBO to produce self-guided arts curricula for both K-12 and adult learners. 

nico is a regular contributor to arts publications, with forthcoming essays to be published in 2024 by the Studio Museum in Harlem, the National Gallery of Victoria, and Routledge. She is the author of Museum Metamorphosis: Cultivating Change Through Cultural Citizenship, published by Rowman & Littlefield and the American Alliance of Museums Press (2022). Informed by the tenets of her broader practice, the book platforms critical perspectives from across the arts and culture ecosystem, offering tools to reshape arts institutions into cooperative sites of collective impact and social change. nico has delivered keynote addresses on Museum Metamorphosis at the Art Bridges Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, the Smith College Museum of Art, and the Tulsa Artists Fellowship, to name a few. 

Over the past two decades, nico has worked both independently and as a nonprofit arts leader to drive engagement, strategy, and innovation within artist-founded, culturally-specific organizations. She currently serves on the Board of Directors at the National Academy of Design and the Cultural Advisory Council for the Five Colleges and the Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, and is a former Board Member at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven.

In recent posts, she served as Inaugural Executive Director of NXTHVN (2019-20); Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2014-19); Curatorial Director of Rush Arts Gallery (2007-10); and Curatorial Assistant at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2006-07). nico holds an MA in Creative & Cultural Entrepreneurship from Goldsmiths, University of London (2011), and a BA in Art-Semiotics from Brown University (2006).