Essence Harden is Senior Curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Curator of EXPO Chicago’s Profile section. Harden co-curated Made in L.A. 2025 at the Hammer Museum and curated the Focus section of Frieze Los Angeles from 2024 to 2026.

Harden has organized exhibitions at the California African American Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, Art + Practice, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Museum of the African Diaspora, and the Oakland Museum of California, among others. Harden’s curatorial work is joined by a writing practice that has appeared in Frieze, Gagosian Quarterly, The Los Angeles Times Magazine: Image, Art21, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Artsy, and Cultured, as well as numerous exhibition catalogs.

Harden is a 2025 recipient of the Teiger Foundation Research Grant, a 2018 recipient of the Creative Capital, Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and a 2020 Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellow. Harden previously served as Visual Arts Curator at the California African American Museum and has worked as an art consultant for film and television.