Gabriella Shypula is a curator and PhD candidate in art history and criticism at Stony Brook University, specializing in contemporary art. Rooted in social and oral histories, her dissertation examines methods of autobiography in feminist art practices, particularly as engaged by New York-based women artists from the 1970s to the 1990s. Shypula is currently the Leigh and Mary Carter Director’s Research Fellow at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she has contributed to exhibitions, publications, public programs, and collection projects, including Martin Puryear: Nexus (2025–27) and The Gift: Emma Amos with Friends (2026–27). In 2022, she co-curated Revisiting 5+1 at the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, presented in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and co-edited the accompanying catalogue.  She has been selected for the 2026 Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL)/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice.

Previously, Shypula was a writer and editor at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where she authored biographies of women artists in support of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative. She has worked on curatorial and research projects at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMOMA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Princeton University Art Museum; SculptureCenter; A.I.R. Gallery; and the Willem de Kooning Foundation. Past exhibitions she has contributed to include Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture (2024–26); Frank Bowling’s Americas (2022–23); Joan Mitchell (2021–22); and Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018–19).

Shypula holds an MA in art history and criticism and a graduate certificate in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from Stony Brook University. Her research has been supported by the Stony Brook University Alumni Association Doctoral Summer Fellowship, Kusama Research and Travel Awards, and the Miriam and Maurice Goldberger Fellowship.

✉ gabriella.shypula@stonybrook.edu

Photo: Seta Nagbe