Cheryl Finley is a distinguished art historian, curator and author. A seasoned educator, she is the Walton Endowed Professor and Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective at Spelman College, where she leads an innovative program preparing the next generation of museum and visual arts leaders. Dr. Finley holds a Ph.D. in African American Studies and History of Art from Yale University and has held academic and curatorial positions at institutions including Wellesley College and Cornell University. Her research focuses on contemporary African diaspora art, art markets, photography, museums and visual culture.

Dr. Finley is the award-winning author of Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (Princeton University Press, 2018) and has contributed widely to exhibitions, publications and global conversations about Black art, memory and representation. She has co-curated projects including ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory and co-organized the international convening Black Portraiture[s] in Paris, Johannesburg, New York and Los Angeles. Dr. Finley is a recipient of the 2025 Badass Art Woman award from Project for Empty Space in Newark, New Jersey, USA, and the recipient of the 2026 Dr. David C. Driskell Prize awarded by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.