Blair Murphy is a curator based in the DC area. She is Senior Curator + Director of Exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington in Arlington, VA.
Since joining MoCA Arlington in 2018, she has guided the development of its exhibitions program through a period of ambitious growth. She shapes the vision for the exhibitions program, collaborates with guest curators, manages public art on the museum’s lawn, oversees the museum’s SOLOS exhibitions program, and curates solo and group exhibitions. She served as interim director of the museum from October of 2020 to May of 2021.
Blair’s previous curatorial projects include exhibitions at The Kitchen (New York, NY), Washington Project for the Arts (Washington, DC), Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Field Projects (New York, NY), VisArts Rockville (Rockville, MD), and with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Before joining MoCA Arlington she held positions with non-profit arts organizations and artist-oriented spaces including Washington Project for the Arts, DC Arts Center, and Provisions Library (all Washington, DC), and Field Projects (New York, NY).
Blair has been a featured speaker at museums in DC and New York, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum and at academic institutions including the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at GW University, Maryland Institute College of Art, American University, Georgetown University, Cooper Union, and the National Academy of the Sciences.
She was a 2014-2015 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow of the Whitney Independent Study Program and holds an MA from Georgetown University and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ARLINGTON
2018 – CURRENT
Exhibitions
2026
Within Reach: Artists and the Built Environment
Gerardo Camargo, Megan Mueller, and Nicholas Wisniewski
2025
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Here the waving flag. Here the other world.
A Passage of Force Through Matter: Current Painting
Tom Bunnell, Asha Elana Casey, Claudia “Aziza” Gibson-Hunter, Matthew Mann, Maggie Michael, and Marisa Rasum
2024
Assembly 2024: Horizon Scanning (co-curated with Jared Packard)
Nyame O. Brown, Everything is Collective, Allegra Hangen, Elisa Harkins, Marnie Ellen Hertzler, Jesús Hilario-Reyes, Cesar Lopez, Jovencio de la Paz, Kenya (Robinson), Benjy Russell, Shelby Shadwell, Keith Tolch, Lily Xie, and X
Ghost of a Dream: I know a place where they perform miracles
2023
An Adventure of Being
Vincent Cy Chen, Nicki Cherry, Jeremy Olson, and Stephanie J. Williams
Global Spotlight: Video Art from Ukraine
Nikolay Karabinovych, Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy, Mykola Ridnyi
2022
Assembly 2022: Time and Attention
Merryn Omotayo Alaka & Sam Fresquez, MyLoan Dinh, Erika Lynne Hanson, Priya Suresh Kambli, Cecilia Kim, Vincent Miranda, Kelly Taylor Mitchell, Courtney Puckett, Trina Michelle Robinson, Mandy Cano Villalobos, and Sandy Williams IV
Global Spotlight: Annabel Daou
2021
Take a Number: Artists and Bureaucracy
Sobia Ahmed, Maura Brewer, Chris Combs, Evan Hume, Stephanie Mercedes, R.L. Martens, and Pau S. Pescador
Stretched
Amna Asghar, Rushern Baker IV, Erick Antonio Benitez, Mark Joshua Epstein, Saskia Fleishman, Jen Noone, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Madeline A. Stratton, and Rives Wiley
2020
By Proxy
Gal Cohen, Maps Glover, Jeremy Hutchison, Mariah Anne Johnson, Ivetta Sunyoung Kang, and My Husband
Applied Forces
Eames Armstrong, Rex Delafkaran, Billy Friebele, Michael Dax Iacovone, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Rose Nestler, Kirk Amaral Snow, and Antoinette Suiter
2019
Assembly 2019
Kara Braciale, Wilfred Brunner, Bradley Chriss, Shannon Collis & Liz Donadio, chanan delivuk, Lillian Bayley Hoover, Katie Kehoe, Dean Kessmann, Magnolia Laurie, Khánh H. Lê, Gina Gwen Palacios, Judith Pratt, Sarah G. Sharp, Molly Springfield, McKinley Wallace III, and Fabiola Alvarez Yurcisin.
Transitional Objects
Kyle Bauer, Calder Brannock, Dexter Ciprian, Emily Culver, Liz Ensz, Kyle Hittmeier, Trish Tillman, and Holly Trout.
Over, Under, Forward, Back
April Camlin, Steven Frost, Rania Hassan, Sarah J. Hull, Robin Kang, Julia Kwon, Olivia Tripp Morrow, Natalia Nakazawa, Danni O’Brien, and Sarah Stefana Smith.
2018
Open World
Rachel Frank, Jodie Mim Goodnough, Rachel Guardiola, Azikiwe Mohammed, Nicholas O’Brien, Plakookee, Alissa D. Polan, and Stephanie J. Williams
Public Art at MoCA Arlington
2023
Zaq Landsberg: Reclining Liberty
2021
Dane Winkler: Timepiece Mythos
2020
Lynda Andrews-Barry: Passage
2019
Patrick McDonough: Portrait of a County by a Youngish Man
2018
Rachel Schmidt: Distort Displace
PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS
2019
Matthew Mann: Fixer Upper, Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
2017
Blue Freedom: Ebtisam Abdulaziz, DC Arts Center, Washington, DC
Close at Hand, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington, DC,
Carla Edwards, Roxana Geffen, Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, and Amber Robles-Gordon
Footprint aka The Lansburgh’s Notebook, Flashpoint Gallery, Washington, DC
Failed Evolution, SPRING / BREAK Art Show, New York, NY
(co-curated with Alissa D. Polan)
Morgan Blair, Cooper Holoweski, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Alissa D. Polan, and Rives Wiley
2016
Strange Landscapes, MoCA Arlington (formerly Arlington Arts Center), Arlington, VA (co-curated with Karyn Miller)
Matthew Colaizzo, Edgar Endress, Ryan Hoover, Ariel Jackson, Katarina Jerinic, Matthew Mann, Jaimes Mayhew, Alejandro Pintado, Jacob Rivkin, Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta, and Kate Stewart.
2015
Full-Scale Exercise, Field Projects at Artist-Run, Miami Beach, Fl
Lisa Dillin, Patrick McDonough, and Barbara Polster
Marginalias, Field Projects, New York, NY
Molly Springfield, Brad Thiele, and Wilmer Wilson IV
S/N, The Kitchen, New York, NY
(co-curated with Alexander Fleming and Anya Komar)
Sonia Boyce in collaboration with Ain Bailey, Cammisa Buerhaus, James Coleman, Manon de Boer, Joan La Barbara, Tracie Morris, Vanessa Place, Steve Reinke, Lis Rhodes, SCRAAATCH, Masha Tupitsyn, Ultra-red, Galina Ustvolskaya, Jackie Wang
2014
Strange Bedfellows, Washington Project for the Arts at VisArts, Rockville, MD
Ingrid Burrington, Bean Gilsdorf, Katie Hargrave, Leslie Holt, Benjamin Kelley, Jennifer Levonian, A. Moon, Sebastian Martorana, and Jenny Walton