Chisenhale Gallery Director Zoé Whitley to Step Down in 2025

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London‘s Chisenhale Gallery announced today that director Zoé Whitley will step down from her position on 1 March 2025. Whitley joined the non-profit gallery as a senior curator at Hayward Gallery in 2020.

During her tenure, Chisenhale Gallery produced major art exhibitions including Rindon Johnson’s commission Law of Large Numbers: Our Selves (2021), which was included in the 2024 Venice Biennale. The gallery also presented many artists with their first major commissions, including Rachel Jones (2022), Nikita Gale (2022), Alia Farid (2023), Benoît Piéron (2023), and Joshua Leon (2024).

Beyond exhibition-making, Whitley contributed to the publishing arm of Chisenhale Gallery, producing Leon’s book The Process (2024), which was awarded The Emerging Art Foundation’s inaugural Art Writing Prize.

Prior to Chisenhale Gallery, she curated the British Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, featuring an exhibition by Cathy Wilkes. In 2017, she co-curated the exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which debuted at Tate Modern in London and earned the American curator an award from the Association of Art Museum Curators.

‘Arts leadership today may be difficult, but my world view is perpetually expanded by what artists propose to bring to life,’ Whitley said. Post-Chisenhale, she plans to return to curating and writing independently.

‘I would like to thank Zoé for the hard work she’s poured into Chisenhale Gallery over her five-year tenure, resulting in 15 exhibitions and a new publishing initiative of eight books—one award-winning, and two more to come,’ said May Calil, Chair of Chisenhale Gallery’s board.

‘Her time at Chisenhale is an important part of Chisenhale’s history and her achievements are now an indelible part of our legacy,’ she added.

Chisenhale Gallery will begin their search for a new director in early 2025. —[O]

Main image: Zóe Whitley (2024). Photo: Daryll Borja.