About

Wassan Al-Khudhairi is an accomplished curator and arts leader known for her creative, entrepreneurial thinking and curatorial achievement across global institutions. She is currently based in New York, where she is Partner at C/O: Curatorial Office with Christopher Y. Lew.  C/O brings curatorial thinking beyond museum walls. 

Most recently, Al-Khudhairi was part of the curatorial team for the 2025 Hawaii Triennial. This followed her tenure as the Ferring Foundation Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM), where she organized exhibitions and new commissions with artists including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Bethany Collins, Derek Fordjour, Shara Hughes, Hayv Kahraman, Gala Porras-Kim, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Hajra Waheed. At CAM she co-produced the Radio Resistance podcast, which accompanied the thematic exhibition Stories of Resistance.

Al-Khudhairi served as the Founding Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, overseeing its successful opening in 2010. Her extensive international biennial experience further includes serving as co-curator for the 6th Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan (2017) and co-Artistic Director for the 9th Gwangju Biennial in South Korea (2012).

Earlier, as the Hugh Kaul Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, she organized Third Space: Shifting Conversations About Contemporary Art, for which the accompanying catalogue earned her an Award for Excellence from the American Association of Museum Curators in 2019.

Al-Khudhairi holds an MA with Distinction in Islamic Art and Architecture from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute and a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership program, and in 2020, she was honored with ArtTable’s New Leadership Award.