Over the past two decades, Sara Cochran worked in a variety of museums across the United States. In 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, she opened The Church, an art center in Sag Harbor (NY) with artists Eric Fischl and April Gornik. She curated and co-curated 13 exhibitions, including 5 major thematic shows Road Rage, Empire of Water, Threading the Needle, Strike Fast Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing, and Are You Joking: Women & Humor. Previously, she collaborated with artist Gregory Sale on a year-long project, Future IDs, on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco. As Director and Chief Curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art she doubled the museum’s annual attendance and curated 8 exhibitions, including with Betye Saar and Postcommodity. As Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Phoenix Art Museum, Cochran organized 15 exhibitions, premiering Kehinde Wiley’s Memling Series. Earlier in her career, she held curatorial positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She earned her Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and Masters from Université de la Sorbonne, Paris IV. In 2015, she participated in the Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate Universities.

Especially in these polarized times, contemporary art and museums can serve as a calm and compelling arenas in which viewers can see through the eyes of others, understand new points of view, explore questions without the heat of politics, and be a laboratory for invention. I believe passionately in doing the hard work to bridge the divide between artists and the general public in ways that respect art and viewers. Relevancy is key and a produce of sustained conversations that make us all stronger.