Larry participated as a Curatorial Fellow for the Spring 2019 Athens Residency. Click here to see Larry’s program.

Larry Ossei-Mensah uses contemporary art as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic has organized exhibitions and programs at commercial and nonprofit spaces globally. A native of The Bronx, Ossei-Mensah is the co-founder of ARTNOIR, a global collective designed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class and celebrate the artistry and creativity of Black and Brown artists around the world. Ossei-Mensah was a contributor to the first-ever Ghanaian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, with an essay on the work of visual artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. 

Ossei-Mensah is the former Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAD), Detroit, and currently serves as Curator-at-Large at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where he curated the exhibition Let Freedom Ring in 2021. Recently, Ossei-Mensah co-curated the 7th Athens Biennale with OMSK Social Club, Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo’s first museum solo exhibition, Soul of Black Folks, at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco, and the Contemporary Art Museum Houston and Guadalupe Maravilla: Purring Monsters with Mirrors on Their Backs at the MCA Denver. Currently, Ossei-Mensah has Ghost of Empires ll on view at BEN Brown Fine Arts in London and Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century co-curated with Rehema Barber at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art.