Joey Orr is the Deputy Director and Chief of Curatorial Affairs at the MCA, where he previously was the Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow.

Dr. Orr served as the Mellon Curator at the Spencer Museum of Art and as affiliate faculty in Museum Studies and Visual Art at the University of Kansas. His curatorial work generally focuses on site-specific installation and artistic research collaborations. His most recent projects include co-curating the exhibition Black Writing with Ayesha Hardison, Director of the History of Black Writing at KU, which resulted in major acquisitions by artists Fahamu Pecou and Dread Scott; a commission with New York–based video and performance artist Janet Biggs involving the ALICE collaboration at CERN in Geneva; and a large-scale, environmentally embedded restoration work by New York–based Bahamian artist Janine Antoni. Dr. Orr holds an MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD from Emory University. His latest book, A Sourcebook of Performance Labor (Routledge, 2024), highlights the value of workers whose labor and knowledge have shaped and supported contemporary performance.

While previously at the MCA, he realized Chris Bradley‘s and Andrew S. Yang’s Chicago Works solo exhibitions; the MCA’s first exhibition of Camille Henrot’s video installation Grosse Fatigue (2013); and Diana Thater’s midcareer retrospective The Sympathetic Imagination, originally organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. By leading the Artistic Division, Dr. Orr’s position complements the Deputy Director and Chief Operations Officer’s role. Both will collaborate to champion and expand the reach, relevance, and impact of the MCA’s artistic contributions.