Halima Taha
Founding Executive Director & CEO, Halima Taha is best known for her groundbreaking bestseller, Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas, the first book to validate the collection of fine art, printmaking, and photography by Americans of African descent as viable assets and commodities within the art market. Her book served as a choice PBS membership incentive, raising its fundraising goal three times. In addition, her extensive expertise laid the groundwork for building and educating worldwide markets in conjunction with the historic National Black Fine Art Show (1997-2009). This partnership also enabled Swann Galleries to pioneer the first international African American auction category. Her work catalyzed prominent museums to pursue African-American art collections for exhibition and acquisition within the first two decades of this century. Taha is an art professional and tireless advocate for artists and Black visual culture; her curatorial, art advisory, and strategic planning develop corporate and not-for-profit programs and audiences. Halima is committed to nurturing the development, documentation, and acquisition of contemporary visual culture as a professional speaker, curator, and arts writer. The breadth of her experience includes co-owning a Gramercy Park gallery in NYC, being former faculty and Director of the Gordon Parks Gallery at the College of New Rochelle, and Adjunct Professor and Curator for the Scott Kaplan Gallery at Bloomfield College in New Jersey. Currently she is the artistic chair of the Hammonds House Museum and a content specialist for the Getty Research Institute's Oral History Project in conjunction with UC Berkeley. Halima currently serves on the boards of the Brandywine Workshop & Archive and the Clara Elizabeth Jackson Carter Foundation. She is an Advisor for the Calabar Artist Residences at Colab Arts, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA Studios), and the Ntozake Shange Trust.