Kimberly Drew is leaving Pace Gallery to return to the classroom, trading the sales floor for a seminar room. The curator, writer, and cultural force will relocate to London this fall to begin a masters program in the History of Design at the Royal College of Art. A spokesperson for Pace confirmed that Drew will continue to collaborate with the gallery on a project basis.
Drew announced her exit on Instagram Friday, first with a story captioned “today is my last day at Pace Gallery.” Two slides later was an image of Drew, apparently carting her belongings out of the gallery, including a brown pair of Loewe balloon pumps, a few pairs of sneakers, some boxes, and a few of the art world’s most consistent accessory, the tote bag. That slide was captioned, “for those wondering – I quit! grad school next. thankful to marc and Pace gallery for the opportunity to grow and now it’s time to go.”
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Drew joined Pace in 2022 as an associate director after making her name through a series of boundary-blurring roles that straddled museums, media, activism, and digital culture. She was promoted to curatorial director in January 2023.
Known for launching the Tumblr Black Contemporary Art and co-editing the influential anthology Black Futures, Drew has also worked as social media manager for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and more recently as a curator for the NFT platform Voice.
Her arrival at Pace was seen as a notable moment for the blue-chip gallery, which was in the midst of a generational refresh under CEO Marc Glimcher. Amy Baumann and Renée Brown were hired at around the same time. In a statement at the time, Glimcher praised Drew’s “exceptional track record as a creative thinker” and her role in amplifying the voices of Black artists and creators.
