Previously, Jamillah James was co-curator (with Margot Norton) of Soft Water Hard Stone, the 2021 New Museum Triennial at the New Museum, New York. James also was Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA); Assistant Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and held curatorial positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Queens Museum, New York, in addition to producing exhibitions and programs at various alternative and artist-run spaces throughout the US and Canada.
She has curated major surveys of Rebecca Morris (Rebecca Morris: 2001-2022, 2022); Nayland Blake (No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake, 2019); and B. Wurtz (This Has No Name, 2018); several thematic group exhibitions, including Enter the Mirror (2022), The Inconstant World (2021), A Shape That Stands Up (2016), and sisters and brothers (2014); and solo exhibitions of Lucas Blalock, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Sara Cwynar, Alex Da Corte, rafa esparza, Ann Greene Kelly, Maryam Jafri, Stanya Kahn, Simone Leigh, and Harold Mendez, among others.
James is a recipient of the inaugural Noah Davis Prize from the Underground Museum, Los Angeles and Chanel Culture Fund (2021), a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2021), and a Curatorial Fellowship for the VIA Art Foundation (2018). She has contributed to Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, The International Review of African American Art, and numerous exhibition catalogues, and regularly lectures on contemporary art, curating, and professional development for emerging artists.