Naomi Beckwith is the artistic director of documenta 16 and deputy director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation in New York. There she oversees collections, exhibitions, publications, curatorial programs, and archives and is jointly responsible for the strategic direction within the international network of affiliated museums. Previously, she held curatorial positions at the MCA Chicago and the Studio Museum in Harlem.  

A graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Beckwith has (co-)organized exhibitions and monographic projects, including the award-winning exhibition Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen (2018, MCA Chicago, USA) and The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now (2015, MCA Chicago, USA). She was a member of the curatorial team for the realization of the exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (2021, The New Museum, New York), conceived by Okwui Enwezor before his death. Her exhibitions, lectures, and publications focus on the impact and resonance of Black culture on multidisciplinary practices in global contemporary art.  

As a scholar and art historian, Beckwith has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, she teaches as a lecturer at the Kassel Art Academy. She has received fellowships for the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (USA). Beckwith was awarded the 2024 David C. Driskell Prize for African American Art and Art History by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (USA). In fall 2025, she led the curatorial team for the American Season at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in their presentation of the exhibition ECHO DELAY REVERB — American Art, Francophone Thought and the Melvin Edwards retrospective.