Kyle Stephan, Ph.D., serves as the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art and is affiliated faculty in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. Her expertise encompasses twentieth and twenty-first-century art of the Americas and the history and theory of media, including photography, film, video, sound, and new media art.
Stephan possesses over fifteen years of experience in exhibitions and collection management in international cultural institutions and university museums. Prior to joining The Block, she held positions at the Harvard Art Museums, focusing on acquisitions, exhibitions, collection management, and curricular integration of modern and contemporary art. Notable exhibitions include Wolf Vostell: Dé-coll/age Is Your Life, the first stateside survey of the Fluxus artist at the Harvard Art Museums, and, as assistant curator, The Matter of Photography in the Americas, an examination of the medium of photography and its global circulation by contemporary Latin American and Latine artists at the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University. She has organized exhibitions and held curatorial roles at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, ZKM Karlsruhe, Bank of Brazil Cultural Centers, Los Angeles’ REDCAT Theatre, OXY Arts, San Francisco Camerawork, Hayward Gallery, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), and the British Film Institute, where she served as curator of film and moving image art from 2005 to 2010.
Stephan received her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her scholarship on contemporary art and media appears in exhibition catalogs published by Yale University Press, Stanford University Press, Hatje Cantz, and Mousse Publishing, as well as in academic journals and online platforms such as Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts and Rhizome.