Elizabeth Grady is a curator, cultural advisor, and consultant, cross-pollinating socially engaged art (SEA) and management consulting to create emotionally intelligent organizations and effective arts for change programs. She has advised The Rockefeller Foundation on the role of the arts in building civil society, and corporations like Nike on developing core values, streamlining project management and team building. She is currently writing on self-institutionalizing as a form of artistic and political agency in post-Communist countries, building on recent trips to Warsaw and Budapest.

Grady’s expertise in socially engaged art is rooted in a systems-based approach to solving seemingly intractable challenges. For five years, she was the inaugural Director of Programs at A Blade of Grass, an organization that supports social arts practice; and she ran the smARTpower program, a US State Department initiative administered by the Bronx Museum that sent US artists to 15 countries to do SEA projects in partnership with local cultural spaces. She has worked globally, and in Curatorial at MoMA, SFMoMA and the Whitney Museum. In addition to the 15 smARTpower countries, Grady has organized projects for the Moscow, Canary Islands, and Havana Biennials, and has worked in Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest, with a two-year research and writing stint in Berlin.

Her BA in Art History and German is from Macalester College, and her MA and PhD in Art History is from Northwestern University. She has written over 30 books, journal articles, and reviews; most recently for the Guggenheim Social Practice catalogue and the Austrian journal, Springerin. Grady has moderated over 50 workshops, panels and lectures, and has over 20 years’ teaching experience.