Melissa Rachleff 

Melissa Rachleff is a Clinical Professor in the Visual Arts Administration Program at NYU Steinhardt, where she concentrates on the non-profit sector. In 2017, she curated Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952-1965 for NYU Grey Art Gallery; she also wrote and edited the accompanying book, which is co-published by the Grey and Prestel Publishing. Rachleff began her career as the assistant curator at Exit Art and co-curated exhibitions on the intersection of visual art and documentation. She also worked on exhibits about under-examined artists in their mid-career. As a program officer for the New York State Council on the Arts from 1999-2007, Rachleff was an advocate in supporting contemporary art projects done in collaboration with local communities. She has written about artist organizations for a variety of publications, and her essay, “Do It Yourself: A History of Alternatives” was published in Alternative Histories: New York Art Spaces (MIT Press) in 2012. For the 50th anniversary of 1968, Melissa also curated Narrative & Counternarrative: (Re)Defining the Sixties for NYU’s Bobst Library (2018), based on the school’s three main archive collections: Fales Library & Archive, Tamiment Library and the University’s archive.

Image Credit: Photo courtesy of Melissa Rachleff.