Jen Mergel

Head of the Contemporary Art Department
MFA Boston, USA

Jen Mergel is a nationally respected Boston-based contemporary art curator and cultural leader working to expose her hometown’s histories and collaboratively reimagine its futures through an equity and empowerment lens. She has organized more than 50 exhibitions for museum, academic, and citywide venues. Her recent curatorial projects have focused on Boston’s Black Feminisms, Exquisite Corpse collaborations in times of pandemic, and histories of spatial justice through the 2022 Olmsted Bicentennial. From 2010 to 2017, Jen headed the Contemporary Art Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, after prior curatorial roles at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy, among others. In 2017, she left the museum context to connect art and people in public spaces. With the Emerald Necklace Conservancy in she was guest curator of the award-winning citywide 2018 exhibition “Fog x FLO: Fujiko Nakaya on the Emerald Necklace.” She subsequently became the Conservancy’s inaugural Director and then Senior Advisor of Cultural Partnerships & Parks Equity and led the award-winning initiative “Olmsted Now: Greater Boston’s Olmsted Bicentennial.” As of June 2023, Jen is the new the James & Audrey Foster Executive Director of the Esplanade Association, a community non-profit that stewards over 3 miles of Boston’s iconic riverfront. With her staff and partners, she builds the Association’s capacity to co-create more impactful and inclusive park experiences through programs, plantings and projects that increase collective expression, health and access.

Jen Mergel was invited for a research trip in 2017 while she was working at the MFA Boston.

Jen Mergel. Photo: courtesy of the curator