Anastasia James is a visionary arts leader with nearly two decades of experience shaping cultural institutions and advancing the role of the arts in public life. She currently serves as Director of Galleries & Public Art at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, where she provides strategic leadership for five public galleries and a dynamic public art program, fostering artistic excellence and community engagement on both regional and national scales. As the staff lead for the Trust’s Public Art & Design Advisory Committee, she is also part of the core team developing Arts Landing, a landmark civic space designed by Field Operations debuting in 2026. A recognized expert in institutional strategy, fundraising, financial management, and large-scale cultural initiatives, she is dedicated to building museums and arts organizations that are financially sustainable, artistically ambitious, and deeply rooted in their communities.

James has nearly two decades of experience driving curatorial innovation and institutional growth, working alongside visionary founders to shape their ambitions with both forward-thinking creativity and deep respect for historical legacies. As Deputy Director of Art & Education and Chief Curator at the Bechtler Museum, she led curatorial, education, community engagement, and programming teams, guiding the museum’s artistic and strategic direction. She also oversaw major programmatic initiatives, including a chamber music season, an architectural film program, expansive outreach efforts in prison systems, and K-12 programs that reached over 100,000 students annually. A longtime champion of artists with disabilities and the institutions that support them, she has developed exhibitions and initiatives that celebrate neurodiverse and disabled artists, fostering greater visibility and institutional recognition for their work. Previously, as the Founding Curator of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, she collaborated closely with George Lucas on collection development and institutional planning, helping to translate his vision into a dynamic and sustainable museum model. She has also held senior curatorial roles at SUNY New Paltz and the Contemporary Jewish Museum and began her career at the Queens Museum and the Andy Warhol Museum.

Over the course of her career, James has curated more than 50 exhibitions, demonstrating a deep engagement with both historical and contemporary artistic discourse. Her curatorial projects have ranged from a nine-screen presentation of Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvelous Entanglement to a retrospective of Stanley Kubrick, as well as solo exhibitions with Nicholas Galanin, Josef Albers, Cary Leibowitz, Thaddeus Mosley, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, and Brigid Berlin. A recognized scholar of postwar and contemporary global art, she is a leading authority on Andy Warhol, having edited three monographs that critically examine his work through the lens of his collaborators. Her curatorial practice is distinguished by a rigorous engagement with new and emerging media, as well as a sustained commitment to amplifying historically underrepresented voices in the field. James’s exhibitions and scholarship have been widely reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, ArtNews, Art in America, The Los Angeles Times, T Magazine, Vogue, and The New Yorker. She holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, where her research explored the work of Ray Johnson and the intersection of democratic ideals and progressive American arts education.

Photo: Michael Parente, 2025.