Kathleen Goncharov, Esteemed Curator and Artist, Dies at 73

Kathleen Goncharov, a curator whose work included organizing shows for Just Above Midtown gallery, died at her home in Boca Raton, Florida, of natural causes on December 31. She was 73 years old. 

Goncharov served as senior curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida from 2012 until she retired in 2025. She had previously worked as a curator at institutions throughout the US, curated exhibitions from Rio de Janeiro to Bologna and Rome, and served as the commissioner of the US Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2003, which that year took the form of an exhibition of Fred Wilson, “Speak of Me as I Am,” about the historical and contemporary role of Black people in Venice for the American pavilion.

“It was a great pleasure working with Kathleen Goncharov during my 11-year tenure at the Boca Raton Museum of Art,” said Irvin Lippman, who was the executive director from 2014 until 2025. “She had a fabulous curatorial eye that underscored my favorite comment ever made about our art installations — that our museum had soul, and this was due to Kathy’s talents as a curator. She possessed a natural flair for bringing exhibitions to life, in her singular style that was unmatched. At the museum, she curated more than 30 exhibitions featuring many notable artists, including: Tony Oursler, Whitfield Lovell, Phyllis Galembo, Maren Hassinger, José Alvarez (D.O.P.A.), Charles McGill, and Trine Lise Nedreaas, among others. She was also a great friend who will be greatly missed.” 

Born in 1952 in Monroe, Michigan, Goncharov started out her career in New York in 1980 as curator at Linda Goode Bryant’s Just Above Midtown (JAM) Gallery, where she organized performances and exhibitions. She was director of exhibitions at New York public art presenter Creative Time from 1983 to 1986.

She went on to be art curator at the New School in New York City from 1987 to 2001, building an extensive collection and organizing public programs at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. During that time, she also organized Wilson’s 1992 presentation at the fourth Cairo International Biennale, “Re:Claiming Egypt,” and curated a presentation at the seventh Triennale in New Delhi, India, in 1991. She was public art curator at MIT from 2001 to 2003, overseeing the school’s percent-for-art program and organizing the Venice exhibition. 

From 2003 to 2005 she served as adjunct curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and from 2007 to 2011 she was executive director at Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Among the many artists she supported over the course of her long career were El Anatsui, Lynda Benglis, Petah Coyne, Grand Master Flash, Chitra Ganesh, David Hammons, Mona Hatoum, Barkley Hendricks, Isaac Julien, William Kentridge, Hew Locke, Thomas Nozkowski, Lorraine O’Grady, Tony Oursler, Martin Puryear, Duke Riley, Pat Steir, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Goncharov was also, behind the scenes, a working artist for some 40 years. Her debut exhibition, “Above and Below,” appeared at New York’s Olympia gallery in 2022. “Goncharov points to artists such as Giotto, Duccio, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesco, Masaccio, and especially the eccentric forms and colors of the Sienese painters such as Giovanni di Paolo, Sassetta, Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro, and others—who approached religious subjectivity in their own distinctive fashion—as her central inspirations,” wrote the gallery in press materials.

Goncharov is survived by her longtime partner, poet Charles Doria, her sister Janet Sterling and her sister’s husband Joseph Sterling, and nieces Ann Goff, Amy Sterling, and Emily Sterling, and their families; and by her brother Earl Shew, his wife Sharon Shew, and nephew Stephen Shew, and their family.