Member Spotlight: Emily Zimmerman

Where do you work? What is your job title and what do you do? 

I work as the Assistant Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania. As Assistant Director, I curate one exhibition a year (my first exhibition, Songs for Ritual and Remembrance features Adebunmi Gbadebo, Ken Lum, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Mary Ann Peters will open on June 16th). When I am not curating, I am thinking about ways that the gallery can serve its communities, meeting with faculty, community leaders, and artists, and writing an essay in the Fisher Fine Arts Library. In the fall, I am excited to be teaching the Spiegel Wilkes Seminar in Curating Contemporary Art for the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

 
What professional experiences did you have that led you to your current position?

Originally from Philadelphia, I have been working in the arts for over 20 years. I was so lucky to have early internships at the Institute of Contemporary Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art. After grad school at the Center for Curatorial Studies, I served as the Assistant Curator at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer from 2008-20014. In 2015, I became the Associate Curator of Programs for the Henry Art Gallery, and after that I was the Director + Curator of the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington from 2017 - 2022. I moved back to Philadelphia last year to work for the University of Pennsylvania, where my father Franklin Zimmerman taught for 25 years in the Music Department.

What is the most meaningful part of your job? 

It is such a great gift to be able to work in the service of artists, and to be in constant conversation with them. I love teaching, and passing on the tools of curating is certainly one of the most meaningful parts of my job.

Photo Credit: Megumi Shauna Arai