Cheryl Finley, Ph.D.

Biography

Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., has been a Faculty Member since 2018 and is the Inaugural Director of Arts and Visual Culture.

Cheryl Finley, Ph.D. is a distinguished art historian, curator, and contemporary art critic with an extensive academic background. In 2002, she earned her Ph.D. in African American Studies and History of Art from Yale University. Cheryl began her teaching career at her undergraduate alma matter, Wellesley College, where she also served as adjunct curator at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center before joining the faculty at Cornell University, first in Africana Studies and later in Art History, prior to retiring after an illustrious 20 + year career in 2024.

Since 2024, Cheryl has served as the Walton Endowed Professor and Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective at Spelman College. Committed to engaging strategic partners to transform the arts and culture industry, she leads an innovative undergraduate program at the world’s largest historically Black college and university consortium in preparing the next generation of museum and visual arts leaders.

Cheryl has been a dedicated educator, imparting knowledge through an interdisciplinary, multimedia, comparative approach to topics such as contemporary African diaspora art, art markets, African American art and film, photography, and museum studies. Devoted to enriching her students' educational experience, Cheryl exposes them to significant archives and cultural centers on campus and globally. She enjoys sharing her extensive expertise in contemporary art and art markets in New York and Los Angeles as well as in London, Lagos, Paris and Venice by facilitating immersive, in situ field studies to galleries, museums, auction houses, artists’ studios, and patron’s collections.

Cheryl's impact extends beyond the classroom. She is an award-winning author, noted for Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (Princeton University Press, 2018), based on her dissertation research at Yale. Additionally, she has contributed thought-provoking articles and reviews to publications such as Art Forum, Aperture, Artnet, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Art News and American Quarterly. Her collaborative endeavors include co-curating the touring exhibition, ‘Free as they want to be:’ Artists Committed to Memory (2022 – present), co-organizing the global art and culture convening, Black Portraiture[s] (2013 – present), and co-authoring publications such as Nydia Blas: Love, You Came From Greatness (Image Text Ithaca Press, 2025), Whitefield Lovell: Passages (Rizzoli, 2023), My Soul Has Grown Deep: Black Art from the American South (Yale University Press, 2018), and "Diaspora, Memory, Place: David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z" (Prestel, 2008). Additionally, Cheryl is a frequent essayist, solidifying her standing as a respected scholar and contributor to the field of art history. She is a recipient of the 2025 Badass Art Woman award by Project for Empty Space.

Education

• Ph.D., Yale University
• B.A., Wellesley College

Select Publications

Committed to Memory: the Art of the Slave Ship Icon. Cheryl Finley. Princeton University Press.

Free as they want to be": Artists Committed to Memory. Cheryl Finley and Deborah Willis. Damiani publishing house.

In the News

Cultured: What Is It Really Like to Work at a Black Art Institution Right Now?
Three leaders of Black art institutions in three U.S. cities compare notes about the challenges they face and the opportunities that keep them motivated.