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.”
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.
