Allison K. Young, Ph.D. is an art historian, writer, and curator based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at Louisiana State University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU in 2017.
Young is a historian of postcolonial and contemporary art, and her research focuses primarily on African and African Diaspora artists and art histories. Her scholarship centers the intersection of art and social justice movements from a variety of geographic and transnational perspectives. Young’s first book, Freedom as Form: Gavin Jantjes, Anti-Apartheid, and the Transnational Avant-Garde, is forthcoming with Duke University Press in early 2027 as part of the series ‘The Visual Arts of Africa and its Diasporas.’ She is currently at work on a second book project that examines art, material culture, and public history in Louisiana at the intersection of climate crisis and racial injustice.

Young has curated exhibitions across the United States, and has published writing about contemporary art in academic and critical platforms such as African Arts, Art Journal, Art Review, Artforum, Apollo International, Africanah.org, ART AFRICA Magazine, British Art Studies, The Brooklyn Rail, Burnaway, liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, the International Review of African American Art, Panorama: Journal of the Society of Historians of American Art, and the Photoworks Annual. She has contributed as a lead author to numerous international exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and edited volumes.

In recent years, Young’s scholarship has received the support of grants, fellowships, and awards from organizations such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, College Art Association, the New Foundation for Art History, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, the Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society (LSU Chapter), and the Louisiana Board of Regents.

She has been a Contributing Editor of Global Modern and Contemporary Art for Smarthistory since 2015 and is currently Vice President of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians and Editor-in-Chief of Benezit Dictionary of Artists.

photo by trenity thomas, 2025

Allison K. Young

About Publications Scholarship Exhibition Catalogues Art Criticism Practice Curatorial Teaching News and Events Awards and Grants Public Programs Conferences News Contact

About

Publications
Scholarship
Exhibition Catalogues
Art Criticism

Practice
Curatorial
Teaching

News and Events
Awards and Grants
Public Programs
Conferences
News

Contact