Christian Ramírez

Cohn Assistant Curator of Contemporary and Community Art Initiatives / Phoenix Art Museum

Christian Ramírez (she/her) is the Cohn Assistant Curator of Contemporary and Community Art Initiatives at Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt). Her portfolio of responsibility includes managing the institution’s Arizona Artist Awards programs and curating exhibitions of work by annual recipients, curating exhibitions of contemporary art drawn from the Museum’s contemporary art collection, and fostering deepened relationships with regional and Arizona-based artists to curate exhibitions that elevate their work among statewide and national audiences. Ramírez also serves as the liaison for artists presented to the community through the Museum’s semiannual Lenhardt Lectures. Her recent exhibitions include The Collection: 1960 – Now, Guarding the Art: A Frontline Perspective, and she was the coordinating curator for the PhxArt presentation of Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory.

Prior to assuming this role in 2022, Ramírez served from 2018 to 2021 as the Museum’s Public Programs Manager. Her responsibilities included oversight of programming for monthly free First Fridays. To create deeper connections between artists and Phoenix Art Museum, Ramírez worked closely with First Friday artists to create bespoke programming that allowed them to focus on their visions while fulfilling the Museum’s mission to broaden understanding and engagement with the visual arts. Additionally, as Public Programs Manager, Ramírez created vital partnerships that enabled the Museum to develop new relationships with underserved audiences.

Ramírez has more than a decade of experience in the arts, working previously at MOCA Tucson (2011-2016) and as the Residency and Exhibitions Manager at Artpace San Antonio (2021-2022). In 2016, she co-founded Everybody, a curatorial project currently based in Tucson, Arizona, that organized the exhibition Henry Codax (2017), participated in NADA New York showing Elliott Jamal Robbins and Casey Jargo (2018) and received the 2021 Night Bloom Grant, organized by MOCA Tucson in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Ramírez has sat on jury panels for the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Grand Canyon Conservancy and CALA Alliance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked with Museum Workers Speak to raise $100,000 over eight months as part of a mutual-aid effort to provide cash relief to 200 museum workers who were adversely affected by COVID-19. Ramírez earned a BFA in photography from the University of Arizona in Tucson.