Juror: Taylor Bythewood-Porter, Curator and Writer
Taylor Bythewood-Porter is a curator and writer whose practice engages history, material culture, and Black feminist thought to examine the rituals, aesthetics, and afterlives of the African Diaspora. Her work bridges archival research and curatorial praxis to surface overlooked narratives and cultural memory.
She was previously the Curator of History at the Museum of Riverside, where she organized First Comes Love: Courtship in the Victorian Era (2025). In 2023, she was honored with the American Association for State and Local History’s Award of Excellence for Rights and Rituals: The Making of African American Debutante Culture (2021), a critically acclaimed exhibition she curated while serving as Assistant Curator at the California African American Museum (CAAM).
At CAAM, Bythewood-Porter co-curated a range of exhibitions, including Tatyana Fazlalizadeh: Speaking to Falling Seeds (2023), Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century (2020), The Liberator: Chronicling Black Los Angeles, 1900–1914 (2019), and Making Mammy: A Caricature of Black Womanhood, 1840–1940 (2019). She also contributed to How Sweet the Sound: The History of Gospel Music in Los Angeles (2018), California Bound: Slavery on the New Frontier, 1848–1865 (2018), Circles and Circuits I: History and Art of the Chinese Caribbean Diaspora (2017), and Lezley Saar: Salon des Refusés (2017).
Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Frieze Week, and Yesterday We Said Tomorrow for Prospect.5.
