Alliyah Allen is an independent curator, arts administrator, and researcher based in Newark, New Jersey. She is currently co-curating In Dreamtime: Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art at The Newark Museum of Art, opening October 2026, and co-editing the accompanying catalogue. Her practice operates at the intersection of contemporary art, community engagement, and social change, using curatorial work as a form of cultural intervention. Allen collaborates with artists, institutions, and community-based organizations to develop exhibitions, public programs, and research initiatives that challenge structural inequities, activate collective memory, and expand access to cultural resources. Her work centers Black visual culture and socially engaged art as tools for accountability, imagination, and civic transformation.

Previously, Allen served as Associate Curator and Programs Director at Express Newark, where she led institution-wide exhibitions, public programs, and artist residencies rooted in civic engagement and social justice. Her work includes supporting exhibitions such as Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility, curated by Scheherazade Tillet and Zoraido Lopez-Diago; projects with artist Willie Cole; and Blues People, a multi-artist exhibition examining Black cultural production and contemporary identity.

She is currently working on the public art project The Wards of Newark: Then and Now, by multidisciplinary artist Manuel Acevedo and the public art studio New Arts, led by Salamishah Tillet, which supports site-responsive public art and community-engaged research across the city of Newark. Allen also serves as studio manager for artist and activist Scheherazade Tillet, supporting the development of Tillet’s socially engaged artwork, public programming, and curatorial projects.

Grounded in care, rigor, and long-term collaboration, Allen’s practice insists on art as a lived, public practice—one that intervenes in systems of power while building more just and sustainable cultural ecosystems. She holds an MA in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University and works nationally across museums, nonprofits, and public art contexts.