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JESSE BANDLER FIRESTONE | CURATOR AND WRITER



Jesse Firestone is a curator whose work foregrounds artist agency, public trust, and the conditions under which artworks are produced and encountered. His exhibitions frequently challenge conventional standards of display and institutional protocol, privileging experimentation, process, and site responsiveness.

Over the past decade, Firestone has organized more than 60 exhibitions, commissions, and interdisciplinary programs across museums, university galleries, public gardens, artist-run spaces, and civic contexts. His curatorial practice frequently centers on conceptual and transgressive artistic practices while commissioning new projects with artists at pivotal stages of production.

Firestone has collaborated with institutions including Wave Hill, Montclair State University Galleries, The Shed, BRIC, Harvard University, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. His writing has appeared in Document Journal, Sculpture Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail, and exhibitions he has organized have been mentioned in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, ArtNet, ItsNiceThat, Another Magazine, Vogue Scandinavia, Galerie Magazine, and WideWalls.


Select Exhibitions

An experimental social project centered on the repatriation of wakas—sacred and ceremonial objects from the Andean region.
A crime scene meets holiday altar in this installation exploring ritual, Americana, and seasonal excess.

Pensive, sensual, and decorative works by Joseph Liatela presented alongside historic religious artworks explore Catholic symbolism, trans identity, loss, healing, and reverence.


Artists on labor and time.
Art in the age of climate change. 
High Tide

Satellite Art Show
Investigative and solution-oriented artists occupied the vacant headquarters of a local political campaign. Featuring South Florida artists exploring land use, tourism, and climate change in Miami Beach.
Rekindled
Kamari Carter

Wave Hill
A lamppost, rope, and game of hangman take on renewed meaning in this elegiac homage to Dinah and Bet, two Black women wrongfully accused of arson and lynched in Albany in 1794.

Tracing Trajectories

Trestle Projects
Selected works from the Hoggard Wagner Collection are paired with recent works by exhibiting artists, creating intergenerational and cross-contextual dialogues. 
Hi-Tech Low-Tech
Joseph Winograd

Young at Art Museum
An interactive exhibition exploring light, color, and perception through kinetic and lenticular sculptures.
Lesbian Matters

BRIC Biennial
Dildos, testosterone, makeup, and Stone Butch Blues. Organized with Phoenix Lindsay-Hall, this exhibition brought together objects sourced through a nationwide open call to reflect the expansive and evolving meanings of lesbian identity.
The Nature of Family Portraits 

Wave Hill
Staged within a former mansion once visited by Theodore Roosevelt, this exhibition featured BIPOC artists using flora, food, and domestic imagery to expand notions of family, lineage, and inheritance.
Time with others

Mary Sky
A group exhibition staged in the woods exploring uncanny bodies, waste, intimacy, and whimsy.
Earth in Peril 
David Benjamin Sherry

Wave Hill
Psychedelic and intimate large-scale photographs of America’s national parks by David Benjamin Sherry evoke both awe and ecological urgency.
Learning from Donald Judd

beverly x Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
A culminating public program and workshop series in which artists constructed Donald Judd facsimiles from discarded materials, inspired by Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
The Soothing Center

Trestle Projects
A spa-like exhibition featuring interactive artworks addressing healing, pseudoscience, placebo effects, rest, and collective care.