Photo: Ron Hall
Andrea Gyorody is director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University, shaping a curatorial program that fosters transformative dialogue through close engagement with contemporary art. Since assuming her position in 2021, Gyorody has organized a conversation series on art and religion; initiated a multi-year collections care project; implemented a digital gallery guide to further accessibility goals; and spearheaded a successful $2.49 Million grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., which will fund a five-year initiative exploring how life’s major transitions impact religious identity and belonging. She has also curated a number of exhibitions for the Weisman, including solo presentations of Jeni Spota C., Cameron Harvey, Karl Haendel (co-organized with the Kimball Art Center), Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson, and Isabel Yellin.
Gyorody previously served as the Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, where she focused on diversifying the permanent collection through acquisitions of work by emerging artists, as well as collaborating across college departments to create programs to support Oberlin’s diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion efforts. At the Allen, her exhibition Afterlives of the Black Atlantic, co-curated with art historian Matthew Francis Rarey, received a 2020 Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators. Gyorody has also held positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Getty Research Institute; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Her past projects include I Like LA and LA Likes Me: Joseph Beuys at 100 for Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles (2021); the international traveling exhibition Forms Larger and Bolder: Eva Hesse Drawings (2019–2022) co-curated with Barry Rosen; and THE RENDERING (H X W X D =), a major commission by Barbara Bloom for the inaugural FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2018). Gyorody also recently co-curated Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature with Sarah Loyer for The Broad (2024).
Gyorody’s writing has appeared in publications including Artforum; Hyperallergic; Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture; The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture; and the edited volumes Object—Event—Performance: Art, Materiality, and Continuity Since the 1960s (Bard, 2021) and The Art of War (Peter Lang, 2017). She was also the founding editor of Digest, the online publication of the Los Angeles-based arts organization Active Cultures, and writes an occasional newsletter called Weekly Special, which investigates the relationship between art and food.
Gyorody received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles; an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art; and a BA from Amherst College.