Essence Harden is a curator and writer, and Senior Curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Harden is curator of EXPO CHICAGO 2026, co-curator of Made in L.A. 2025 at the Hammer Museum, and curator of the Focus section at Frieze Los Angeles from 2024 to 2026. Previously, Harden served as Visual Arts Curator at the California African American Museum and has organized exhibitions and projects with the Orange County Museum of Art, Art + Practice, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Museum of the African Diaspora, and the Oakland Museum of California, among others. Harden’s writing has appeared in Frieze, Gagosian Quarterly, Interview, Art21, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine: Image, and includes catalogue essays for museum exhibitions and artist publications. Harden is a recipient of the Teiger Foundation Research Grant, the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and an Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellowship.