Alliyah Allen is an Arts Administrator and Curator based in Newark, NJ. She works with socially engaged artists, scholars, and activists to curate exhibitions and programs that foster critical dialogue, community engagement, and lasting change. Her work explores the process of cultural reproduction and social change through art and civic engagement, particularly as it unfolds within cultural institutions like museums and galleries, as well as in the public sphere and underserved communities.

She curated Blues People (2024) and has worked on exhibitions and public art projects, including Willie Cole’s Art Interventions: Spirit Catcher & Lumen-less Lantern (2023), Things We Do in the Dark: Cinematic Experiments in Kinship (2023), Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility (2022), Will You Be My Monument (2021), and A Call to Peace (2019), each presented at Express Newark. 

Allen has collaborated with the Chicago nonprofit A Long Walk Home on projects like Black Girls in Pandemic and Protest: A COVID-19 Report (2020) and has managed programs such as Black Portraiture[s] VII: Play and Performance (2022) and Black Girl Takeover (2022). Prior to her role at Express Newark, she worked with Monument Lab as community research and writer, and contributed to the publication Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. She also worked as an Outreach and Marketing Coordinator for the Wight Foundation, Inc.

Along with her curatorial work, Allen has extensive experience working with schools, nonprofits, and community-based organizations that support K-12 students, where she implements a social justice-centered, arts-based curriculum. This curriculum integrates curatorial research and writing methods with traditional art-making, empowering students to explore critical issues through creative expression. 

Allen is also a photographer and co-founded the LAND Collective, an artist-led initiative that developed projects and supported local artists in Newark, NJ. The collective produced the art book LAND: Reflections on Space and Power, supported by the Third Space Award from Express Newark, SHINE Portrait Studio, and Project for Empty Space.

Allen earned her Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Africana Studies at Haverford College in 2018 and is currently pursuing her Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies at Columbia University.

Contact

alliyah.allen@rutgers.edu

973-353-5517