Ep.237 Amanda Coulson has worked for three decades as a scholar, critic, curator and cultural producer, having collaborated with artists and institutions, private and corporate colleagues, in the US, Europe, and various sites in the Caribbean. A dual-national (Bahamas/US), she grew up between London, Nassau, and New York, where she studied for her Master’s Degree at the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU) and started her career at the Old Master dealers, Wildenstein & Sons, going on to work in various art galleries in London, Paris and Milan. Developing as a writer, Coulson spent 2 years as the international Editor of tema celeste, an Italian bi-lingual contemporary art magazine, before consolidating her critical practice writing for a variety of publications (Frieze, Modern Painters, ARTNews, among others) and providing critical texts for monographic gallery and museum shows.
Coulson also worked as a freelance curator in Germany, organizing several exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Leipzig and Vienna (Austria), with special attention to Bahamian artists. Noting a lack of platforms for galleries representing emerging art, in 2005 she co-founded the VOLTA art fairs, which take place annually in New York and Basel, Switzerland. In 2011, she was invited home to The Bahamas to be Executive Director at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB), where her focus was on increasing global awareness of the contemporary Caribbean art scene and on expanding the capacity and reach of the NAGB through a rigorous combination of capital works, collaborative projects and the building of strong inter-island, regional and international networks. She served on the Davidoff Art Initiative (now Caribbean Art Initiative) Board from 2012-2018, and on the Board of the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC) until she stepped down from the NAGB in 2021, after a decade at the helm.
She is the founding partner at TERN, a new Nassau-based gallery operated by three Bahamian women whose aim is to support Bahamian and Caribbean artists in telling their own stories the global stage.
Image ~ Photo Credit: Blair Meadows
Tern Gallery https://www.terngallery.com/
The Armory 2024 https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-armory-2024-pommery-prize-awarded-anina-major
The Armory 2023 https://www.thearmoryshow.com/info/past-exhibitors/2023/presents/tern
C& https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/places/tern-gallery/
VOLTA https://www.voltaartfairs.com/journal/volta-voices-amanda-coulson
Festival Bahamar https://festival.bahamar.com/speaker/tern-gallery/
Bahamas Local https://www.bahamaslocal.com/showlisting/21880/Tern_Gallery.html
Carib Voxx https://caribvoxx.com/tern-gallery-revolutionizing-caribbean-art-on-bahamian-terms/
Burn Away https://burnaway.org/daily/a-blue-haunting-between-the-caribbean-and-the-carolinas/
Culture Type https://www.culturetype.com/2021/06/01/on-view-tern-gallery-of-nassau-bahamas-presenting-slate-of-caribbean-artists-at-online-atlantic-world-art-fair/
interlocutorinter https://interlocutorinterviews.com/new-blog/2021/10/19/exhibition-feature-the-other-side-of-the-pentaprism-at-tern-gallery
Cayman Art Week https://www.caymanartweek.com/amanda-coulson
Frieze https://www.frieze.com/contributor/amanda-coulson
ArtForum https://www.artforum.com/news/amanda-coulson-departs-national-art-gallery-of-the-bahamas-to-lead-new-tern-gallery-249206/
Our News https://ournews.bs/articles/regional/