Legacy Russell

Russell was born in New York City and grew up in the East Village. She is the daughter of Harlem-born photographer and technologist Ernest Russell and Kamala Mottl, a community gerontologist. She is the great-granddaughter of Nolle Smith, Black cowboy, engineer, and Hawaii statesman.^[8] She attended Friends Seminary, a Quaker school in Manhattan.^[9] Russell holds a dual-major BA from Macalester College in Studio Art and Art History and English & Creative Writing,^[2] as well as an MRes in Art History and Visual Culture with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London.^[9][10] Her graduate dissertation focused on the notion of "re-performing reality" and shared research on artists such as Devin Kenny, Ann Hirsch, Awol Erizku.^[11]

Russell worked at the online platform Artsy, expanding the company's gallery relations across Europe.^[12] She has worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and CREATIVE TIME.^[13] She is a contributing editor at BOMB Magazine.^[12]

Russell writes about art, gender, race, and technology, particularly as they intersect with histories of cyberculture. In 2012, Russell coined the term "Glitch Feminism",^[14] which Russell says "embod[ies] error as a disruption to gender binary, as a resistance to the normative".^[15]

In 2019, The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation awarded Russell the Arts Writing Award in Digital Arts, which offers awardees a spot in the Rauschenberg Residency fellowship.^[10]

Her first book, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, was published in September 2020 by Verso Books.^[16][15] A Forbes review stated, "Glitch Feminism is a rallying cry, a recapturing of cyberfeminism oriented to include and spotlight the many queer and non-white voices who in their practice live out the awesome potential of an enmeshed digital feminism: the glitch."^[17] The New York Times stated the book is "Grounded in theory... but a fast, percussive read".^[18]

In May 2024, Russell published her second book, Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us, with Verso Books.^[19] According to Russell's website, Black Meme, "explores the impact of Blackness, Black life, and Black social death on contemporary conceptions of virality borne in the age of the Internet".^[20] Black Meme was awarded a Creative Capital Award in 2021.^[21]

Russell's curatorial and academic work focuses on queer histories, blackness in visual culture, Internet culture, feminism, and new media. As a curator she has done work around her originating concept of Glitch Feminism. Russell has curated exhibitions and projects at the Museum of Modern Art,^[22] MoMA PS1,^[23] Institute of Contemporary Art, London,^[24] Performa's Radical Broadcast,^[25] Kunsthall Stavanger^[26] in Norway, and The Studio Museum in Harlem.^[27]

Russell was associate curator of exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 2018 to 2021.^[28][16] In 2021, The Kitchen announced that Russell would succeed Tim Griffin as the institution's next executive director and chief curator; she is the first Black person to hold the position of executive director and chief curator at The Kitchen since its founding in 1971.^[3]