Michal Raz-Russo

Michal Raz-Russo is programs director at The Gordon Parks Foundation. In addition to overseeing the Foundation’s programming including exhibitions, fellowship and prize programs, she acts as editor of Gordon Parks Foundation / Steidl Book Prize publications. At the Foundation’s headquarters in Pleasantville, New York, she has curated exhibitions of work by artists including Gordon Parks, Bisa Butler, Jamel Shabazz, Andre Wagner, and others. Among the publications she has edited and contributed to are Devin Allen: Baltimore; Jamel Shabazz: Albums; Ralph Ellison: Photographer; and LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint Is Family In Three Acts. Raz-Russo has been involved in other recent Foundation publications, including Gordon Parks: Born Black (expanded edition) and Gordon Parks: Segregation Story (expanded edition).

Previously, Raz-Russo was the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago. Among the exhibitions she has curated are Never A Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950– 80; Subscribe: Artists and Alternative Magazines, 1970–1995; Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem; and The Three Graces. In 2015 she launched the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series at the Art Institute, a biennial exhibition focused on emerging and mid-career artists that has featured solo museum exhibitions by artists Deana Lawson, Leigh Ledare, Sara Deraedt, and Basma al-Sharif. Raz-Russo holds an MA in Arts Administration and Policy and MA in Modern Art History and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a BA in Architecture from the Cooper Union, New York.