Monika Fabijanska is an art historian and contemporary art curator based in New York City.
She is currently working on a large transnational project, supported with a 2023 Curatorial Research Fellowship of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts , co-writing a book about Betsy Damon , and teaching Curatorial Practice at the New York University.
Her critically acclaimed exhibition of Ukrainian artists Women at War (Fridman Gallery, 2022), listed among ten best art exhibitions of 2022 by both The Washington Post and Frieze, traveled for three years, including to Wesleyan University, Stanford in Washington, Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center, and the North Dakota Museum of Art. Betsy Damon. Passages: Rites and Rituals (La MaMa Galleria, 2021) was among The New York Times best art shows of 2021, following ecofeminism(s) (Thomas Erben Gallery, 2020), and a groundbreaking The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women's Art in the U.S. (John Jay College CUNY, 2018) which was ranked among the best NYC art shows in 2018 by Hyperallergic.
Fabijanska provided the initiative, curatorial and art market consulting for The Museum of Modern Art acquisition and retrospective exhibition of Polish feminist sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (2012), and consulted on WACK! Art in the Feminist Revolution with curator Connie Butler (MoCA LA, NMWA, MoMA P.S.1, 2007-08); and Global Feminisms with curator Maura Reilly (Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2007).
Fabijanska co-produced the presentations of Artur Żmijewski (MoMA, 2009-10), Krzysztof Wodiczko (ICA Boston, 2009-10), Christian Tomaszewski and Joanna Malinowska (Performa, 2009), Tadeusz Kantor (The Jewish Museum, 2008-2009), Zbigniew Libera (University of Michigan, 2006), Wilhelm Sasnal (Berkeley Art Museum, 2005). She organized international conference Art and Theater of Tadeusz Kantor (Graduate Center CUNY, 2009) and curated Tadeusz Kantor's "Theatre of Death" screening series and exhibition (La MaMa E.T.C., 2008). She produced and assisted curator Aneta Szylak with the exhibition Architectures of Gender. Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland (SculptureCenter, 2003, catalog).
In 2003 she launched and led Poland-US Artist-in-Residence Exchange Program, which c. 50 artists, in collaboration with Location One, NYC; Headlands, Sausalito, CA; Spaces, Cleveland, OH, and CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw. Currently, she collaborates with The Bronx Museum of the Art’s AIM fellowship program and Art Omi, where she was a 2024 Critic-in-Residence.
Her writing on women’s art was published in exhibition catalogs, edited volumes Transnational Visual Activism for Women’s Reproductive Rights (Routledge, 2024), Gender Violence, Art, and the Viewer (Pennsylvania State UP, 2024) and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy (Emerald, 2022), as well as ASAP Journal, Women’s Art Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Degree Critical (SVA), Orońsko Sculpture Quarterly, BLOK, and Szum Magazine. Fabijanska holds a Master of Arts degree in History of Art from the University of Warsaw.