Dr Sarah E Kleinman is an emerging art historian and curator specializing in modern and contemporary art, museum studies, and diaspora studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned her PhD in 2024 from the Department of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently adapting her dissertation into a book manuscript, In Favor of One’s Time: Locating the Curatorial Practices of Kynaston McShine, under contract with the University of Arkansas Press. This critical study examines the life and work of the Trinidad-born curator Kynaston McShine (1935–2018), reframing longstanding conceptions of twentieth-century art through Black diaspora studies, queer theory, and the politics of form.
Sarah’s research argues for the Caribbean’s vital role in shaping British and American art, broadening understandings of national identity, and creating space for mobile populations—immigrants, expatriates, and exiles—in the production, circulation, and interpretation of art.
She serves as Communications Officer and Webmaster for the Society of Contemporary Art Historians and the Colorado Fulbright Association. A Fulbright alumna to Trinidad and Tobago, Sarah mentors Fulbright applicants, drawing on her own experiences to support the next generation of scholars.
