Alliyah Allen is a first-year PhD student in Art History at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and an independent curator and arts administrator whose work takes Black feminist approaches to exhibition-making, research, and public engagement. Her interests include Black visual culture, alternative art spaces, archives, Black feminist and queer theory, and the histories of Black-led cultural institutions, particularly in Black urban contexts.
Allen’s scholarly and curatorial practice examines how exhibitions, archives, and cultural institutions produce and preserve histories of Black artistic life. She is particularly interested in the role alternative art spaces have played in creating intellectual, artistic, and community networks beyond traditional museum structures.
Allen holds an MA in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University and a BA in Religion, with a concentration in Africana Studies, from Haverford College. Her major curatorial and public art projects include Blues People (2024), Wards of Newark: Manuel Acevedo (2026), and Dreamtime in Newark: Aljira and the Making of Global Contemporary Art, opening October 15, 2026, at The Newark Museum of Art.