Asma Naeem

Asma Naeem is the Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). Naeem is the first person of color and the first raised in Baltimore to lead the 111-year-old museum. Since her appointment in 2023, Naeem has deepened the BMA’s commitments to innovation, experimentation, and service to its communities. This includes a renewed focus on education, scholarship on global art histories, and an expansive approach to collaboration that emphasizes new curatorial frameworks, support for artists, and audience engagement across the state of Maryland. Her vision has resulted in the creation of fellowship and residency programs for curators and artists and inspired the single largest private gift in the BMA’s history and dedicated to arts education.

Naeem has led a range of major curatorial projects, including the presentation of Amy Sherald’s critically acclaimed exhibition American Sublime. The exhibition broke museum attendance records and exemplified her approach to engaging Baltimore audiences with artists and artworks that have deep local resonances. She also guided the development of Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum and Turn Again to the Earth, multi-pronged initiatives that explored new curatorial methodologies, brought new voices into the museum, and demonstrated how art can propel critical contemporary dialogues. Naeem is actively expanding the BMA’s collection, emphasizing cross-cultural exchange through time. Her curatorial vision includes core focuses on the BMA’s extensive holdings of modern icon Henri Matisse, enhancing storytelling about art and culture from across the globe, and creating new opportunities to platform Baltimore artists.

Previously, Naeem served as the BMA’s Interim Co-Director (2022) and as the museum’s Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator (2018–2022). In those positions, she organized significant thematic exhibitions, such as The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, and important solo artist presentations of works by Candice Breitz, Salman Toor, and Valerie Maynard, among others. Prior to the BMA, Naeem worked at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery as a curator of prints, drawings, and media arts. In this role, she advocated for diversifying the museum’s collection, leading to the acquisition of portraits of women and individuals from Black, Asian, Latin, and Indigenous backgrounds. Her curatorial credits at the National Portrait Gallery include Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now and UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light.

Before pursuing a career in the arts, Naeem worked as an Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York (1995–1999) and as Assistant Bar Counsel at the Office of the Bar Counsel in Washington, DC (2000–2009). Her time spent working as a criminal prosecutor taught her about public service and the critical needs of healthy and thriving societies.

Naeem is a Director of the Baltimore Convention and Tourism Board, an Advisor to the Aspen Institute Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative, and serves on the boards of the Association of Art Museum Directors, the CollegeBound Foundation, and Lunder Institute for American Art, among others. She has published a wide range of scholarly texts and is a frequent contributor to panels and events about support for artists and the future of museums. Naeem was a Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellow (2020) and participated in the Chanel Cultural Leaders Forum (2025). She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Maryland, a J.D. from Temple University, and a B.A. in art history and political science from the Johns Hopkins University.

Naeem was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She immigrated to the U.S. with her Indian parents in 1971 at the age of two. She continues to live in the Baltimore area with her husband and three adult children.