Mia Locks

Locks received a BA from Brown University and an MA from University of Southern California (USC). She was a 2018 fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York City.

Locks is an independent curator based in Los Angeles. She was named Senior Curator and Head of New Initiatives of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, effective July 2019,[1] but resigned from the position in March 2021, citing the museum's lack of commitment to equity and diversity.[2]

Prior to MOCA, Locks co-organized the 2017 Whitney Biennial, with Christopher Y. Lew at the Whitney Museum of American Art.[3]

At MoMA PS1, Locks organized exhibitions including Math Bass: Off the Clock (2015); IM Heung-soon: Reincarnation (2015); Samara Golden: The Flat Side of the Knife (2014); and The Little Things Could Be Dearer (2014).[4] She was also co-curator of Greater New York (2015), with Douglas Crimp, Peter Eleey, and Thomas J. Lax.[5]

As an independent curator, she organized Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945–1980 (2011), with David Frantz, at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, part of the Getty’s inaugural Pacific Standard Time initiative.[6]

Lock's writing has appeared in Afterall, Art Journal, Mousse, and several exhibition catalogues.[7][8] She edited the first monograph of Samara Golden's work, The Flat Side of the Knife, published by MoMA PS1 in 2014.[9] She served on the faculty of the M.A. program in Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts, New York from 2017-2019.[10]