Jacqueline Mabey (they/them) is a curator and historian of contemporary art. They are a PhD candidate in the History of Art Department at University College London. Their dissertation project on the artistic community of Downtown New York during the 1970s and 1980s is supervised by Dr. Stephanie Schwartz and funded by a Graduate/Overseas Research Scholarship.

Currently, however, they are spending another season fallow.

Mabey is a co-founder of Art+Feminism, an international intervention into the writing of art history. They have curated the work of artists including Yael Bartana, Hannah Black, Kate Gilmore, Lucia Hierro, Brendan Fernandes, Ken Gonzales-Day, Jen Liu, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Jumana Manna, Divya Mehra, Lorraine O’Grady, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Legacy Russell, and Addie Wagenknecht. Mabey has spoken about their work at venues such as Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, London; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Columbia University in the City of New York; International Center of Photography, New York; and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto. They participated in residencies at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; 18th Street Art Center, Los Angeles; and the Darling Foundry, Montreal. In 2014, they were named a Leading Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine.

They work independently under the honorific, failed projects. Mabey was born in the land of the Lenape, raised in Miꞌkmaꞌki, and currently split their time between London and Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). You can view their CV, follow them on social, and email them at jacqueline@failedprojects.net.

Image: Chester Higgins, Jr., Oil Slick Surrounds the Statute of Liberty in New York Harbor, 1973. Part of the series, DOCUMERICA: The Environmental Protection Agency’s Program to Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern, compiled 1972-1977.