Jaynelle Hazard is the Director and Chief Curator of the Georgetown University Art Galleries and an Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of Art and Art History. Her work is grounded in a commitment to amplify diverse voices within contemporary art, support pioneering artists, and position museums as sites of learning, cultural exchange, and care.
Since joining Georgetown in 2024, Hazard has led the Galleries’ curatorial vision and exhibition planning across three spaces, with the goal of strengthening the institution’s role as a teaching museum and site of interdisciplinary inquiry. In 2025, she curated McArthur Binion: Notes on Form (Intimate Structures) , a focused presentation highlighting the artist’s ongoing exploration of form, shape, and a deeply personal language of abstraction. Under her leadership, the Galleries established their first two-year exhibition schedule, expanded archival and professional documentation, increased public engagement, and advanced a comprehensive rebrand and new website.
Prior to Georgetown, Hazard curated numerous exhibitions foregrounding formative emerging and established artists. Notable projects include Quantum Shift , featuring international Latinx Light and Space artist Gisela Colón, with both an in-gallery exhibition and an outdoor public sculpture in Washington, DC’s James Monroe Park; What Makes the Earth Shake, presenting the work of fast-rising Black figurative painter Dominic Chambers, recognized by Forbes as one of the most exciting emerging artists of his generation; and SEED and SOLSTICE, concurrent exhibitions at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art and The Kreeger Museum presenting the work of sculptor and microbiologist Kendall Buster.
Previously, Hazard was the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA), where she led a significant rebranding effort and expanded the institution’s reach, impact, and strategic initiatives. She also served as the Director of Exhibitions at Workhouse Arts Center and worked with celebrated artworks during her time supporting the corporate contemporary art collection at UBS and at Blank Projects gallery in Cape Town, South Africa.
Hazard is invested in arts education, collaborating with universities and supporting emerging arts leaders through her professional roles and service with ArtTable and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art Alumni DC Chapter. In 2019, she served as Co-Chair of State of the Art 5 / DC: A Conversation, a conference presented in partnership with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Hazard holds a Bachelor of Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master of Arts from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Associate Professor of the Practice, College - Department of Art & Art History