Kate McNamara Named Director of Harvard’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts
5March 30, 2026
TheCarpenter Center for the Visual Artsat Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hasappointedKate McNamaraJohn R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director. She had held the role on an interim basis since last year. McNamara, the founder of East Providence, Rhode Island-based contemporary art space ODD-KIN, known for its experimental, artist-driven programming. She is a former executive and creative director of My HomeCourt, a nonprofit bringing contemporary art to city parks.
“What excites me most about this moment is the opportunity to deepen the Carpenter Center’s role as a leading contemporary art space and artistic laboratory,” said McNamara in a statement. “Through new residencies, expanded exhibitions, publishing collaborations, and partnerships with our university and neighboring communities, we are building an ecosystem where artists, students, scholars, and local residents encounter art as a living, shared practice. I’m grateful to continue this work and to help guide the Carpenter into its next chapter.”
Before joining the Carpenter Center, McNamara ws interim director at Providence College Galleries and, from 2015 to 2019, director of galleries and exhibitions at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, where she organized shows of artists including Polly Apfelbaum, Anna Craycroft, Kenzi Shiokava. Before that, she was director and chief curator at the Boston University Art Galleries, where she developed cross-disciplinary exhibitions and collaborations with Leidy Churchman, Vlatka Horvat, and the collective Destroy All Monsters, among others. She has held curatorial roles at MoMA PS1 and Participant INC, both in New York.
McNamara holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a BA in curatorial studies from Hampshire College.