Arnold J. Kemp is a visual artist, writer, and educator who previously was an associate curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from 1993–2003. During his curatorial tenure, Kemp created opportunities for solo shows for influential artists such as Ellen Gallagher, Tracey Moffat, Fred Wilson and Mark Dion. He also worked with artists such as David Hammons, Octavia Butler, Sun Ra Research, Kerry James Marshall, Bruce Conner, John Baldessari and others in accomplished group exhibitions. As an artist, Kemp engages in a multidisciplinary practice that extends beyond the formal gallery system by taking the form of talks, performances, limited-edition artist’s books, and collaborations. In the same spirit, Kemp creates artworks in various formats, for example, writing, painting, performance, video and sculpture.
He has exhibited in the Bay Area at New Langton Arts; Southern Exposure; The Lab; ESP: The Luggage Store Gallery; Rena Bransten Gallery; Stephen Wirtz Gallery: Patricia Sweetow Gallery; and Bay Area Poets Theater. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Portland Art Museum, the Schneider Museum of Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, the Hammer Art Museum, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar and The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations at the Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago; M. LeBlanc, Chicago; Martos Gallery, New York; JOAN, Los Angeles; Biquini Wax, Mexico City, Mexico; and Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME. In summer 2025 Kemp curated LIFE-a group show at Artists Space, New York. Kemp lives and works in Chicago and has been awarded residencies and teaching fellowships at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2016 and at Stanford University in 2024.
