NEW YORK, NY.- The Whitney Museum of American Art has appointed Meg Onli as the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator. Formerly the Whitney’s Curator-at-Large, Onli will take on this enhanced role as a key member of the Museum’s senior curatorial team based in New York City, where she will contribute holistically to the contemporary vision of the Whitney. Onli will lead the Whitney’s painting and sculpture acquisition committee and will contribute regularly to the exhibition program, collaborating with colleagues across the Museum and thinking critically and creatively about how works are presented, interpreted, and shared in the galleries, scholarly publications, and digital resources.

Recently, Onli co-curated the celebrated Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing. In 2026 Onli will co-curate the Whitney’s Roy Lichtenstein exhibition with artist Alex Da Corte and the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director, Scott Rothkopf. This exhibition will be the first Lichtenstein retrospective in more than thirty years in New York, the city in which the artist long lived and worked.

"I have had an incredible time working with my talented colleagues at the Whitney and am thrilled to be joining the Museum in a fuller capacity," said Onli. "Stepping into the role of the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator, I am looking forward to collaborating across the Museum to produce exhibitions, publications, and programming that are rigorous and dexterous. The curatorial history of the Whitney is one that has produced field-defining exhibitions, supporting artists at critical phases of their careers, from its longstanding biennial to genre-defying thematic shows. I am inspired by these shows and energized by the work currently happening in the department. I am eager to work more closely with the Whitney's collection through the Painting and Sculpture Committee and to add our unique perspective to the collection by championing emerging and underrecognized artists."

“Meg has quickly become an indispensable member of the Whitney's team, and I'm absolutely thrilled that she will become our next Nancy and Fred Poses Curator,” said Kim Conaty, the Whitney’s Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “An innovative thinker, dynamic exhibition maker, champion of artists, and model collaborator, Meg lives her values in her work, bringing great intelligence and care to everything she does. She's been such a positive force at the Museum, and we're all looking forward to working with her even more in her new role.”

Onli is an important voice in the art world. In 2023, when she was appointed Curator-at-Large at the Whitney, Onli served as an ambassador between her hometown of Los Angeles and New York, building bridges between emerging and overlooked voices in two key art centers. Onli is now based in New York City.

Prior to the Whitney Onli was co-director and curator of the Underground Museum. Before that, she was the Andrea B. Laporte Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (ICA Philadelphia), where she curated exhibitions Colored People Time: Mundane Features, Quotidian Pasts, Banal Presents, Jessica Vaughn: Our Primary Focus Is To Be Successful, and co-curated the retrospective Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation.

Onli is the recipient of a 2012 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital for the Black Visual Archive, a project she founded in 2010 that reviews contemporary Black visual culture. She received a 2014 Graham Foundation Grant, and the 2019 Transformation Award from the Leeway Foundation. She was also the inaugural recipient of the Figure Skating Prize, awarded by Virgil Abloh’s Art Space, in 2021.

Nancy and Fred Poses have dedicated their life to education, the arts, and shaping our world for differences. Nancy became a Trustee of the Whitney in 2013 and is currently Vice Chair of the Museum’s Board. She has been a part of some of the Museum’s most groundbreaking initiatives, including the installation by David Hammons, Day’s End, in Hudson River Park and the transformation of Roy Lichtenstein’s Washington Street Studio into the home for the Whitney’s Independent Study Program. She is a champion of the Museum’s permanent collection, steering the Drawing and Print acquisition committee as its Chair. Under her leadership, the committee has expanded the Museum’s holdings of works on paper by underrepresented artists. She also supports the collection as a member of the Painting and Sculpture acquisition committee and the Studio Forum, which engages with the Whitney’s conservation and research programs. Her commitment to the Museum’s curatorial program is recognized in the naming of the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator.