A native of Chicago who grew up in Hyde Park, Naomi Beckwith is the Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the MCA Chicago who joined the museum staff in 2011. Prior to joining the MCA, Beckwith was associate curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Before that, Beckwith was the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.
After receiving her BA in history from Northwestern University and MA with Distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she wrote her master's thesis on Adrian Piper and Carrie Mae Weems -- Beckwith was the Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program after and received the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in 2008.