Co-Regional Directors, BADA-SF

Jacqueline Francis (Class of 1985) is an art historian and curator. She is the author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (2012).

Among the books she has edited books are Romare Bearden: American Modernist (2011), Is Now the Time for Joyous Rage? (2023), and  Sargent Claude Johnson, a catalog for the exhibition (Huntington Art Museum—2024) she co-curated on this understudied artist’s work. Other curatorial projects include side by side/in the world (San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery, 2019), Adia Millett: You Will Be Remembered (Galerie du Monde—Hong Kong; 2022), Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life (Museum of Craft & Design—San Francisco; 2023).

With Camara Dia Holloway, Francis is the co-founder of the Association of Critical Race Art History. She serves on scholarly, publishing, and advocacy boards such as The Living New Deal Initiative, Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture, the US Latinx Art Forum, and San Francisco’s Queer Cultural Center. She is the Secretary of the National Committee for the History of Art, which is the US delegation to the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art. In 2023, Francis was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts “100” list, recognition of her activism and leadership in the  Bay’s cultural community.

At Dartmouth, she rowed on the women’s team alongside sister ‘85s: Veronica Jenkins, Karyn Marsh, and Akua Sarr. She earned her A.B. in English, and remembers great classes with  Professors Bill Cook, James Heffernan, Horace Porter, Ivy Schweitzer, and Brenda Silver. She holds an M.A. in African American Studies (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and a Ph.D. in Art History (Emory University).

She is Dean of Humanities and Sciences at California College of the Arts on the traditional and unceded lands of Ramaytush Ohlone peoples (also known as San Francisco).