Mia Locks is a contemporary art curator and museum leader.

Mia Locks is an independent curator and writer based in Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]} She co-founded and leads Museums Moving Forward, a data-driven research initiative to support equity in the art museum sector, funded by Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation.^{[citation needed]} She serves on the board of Clockshop, an arts organization in Los Angeles. She is also an editorial advisor on the podcasts "Hope & Dread: The Tectonic Shifts of Power in Art."^[1] " and The Art World: What If...?!"^[2]

Previously, Locks worked as a curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and MoMA PS1, New York.^{[citation needed]} Most recently, she was Senior Curator and Head of New Initiatives at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]} Prior to MOCA, Locks was co-curator of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, with Christopher Y. Lew.^[3] At MoMA PS1, she organized exhibitions including Math Bass: Off the Clock (2015); IM Heung-soon: Reincarnation (2015); Samara Golden: The Flat Side of the Knife (2014); and The Little Things Could Be Dearer (2014).^[4] She also co-curated Greater New York (2015), with Douglas Crimp, Peter Eleey, and Thomas J. Lax.^[5] As an independent curator, she organized Ulrike Müller: or both (2019) at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia, and Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945–1980 (2011), with David Evans Frantz, at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles, as part of the Getty’s inaugural Pacific Standard Time initiative.^[6]

Lock's writing has appeared in Artnet, Mousse, Afterall, Art Journal, and several exhibition catalogues including texts on artists such as Math Bass, Samara Golden, Shara Hughes, William Pope.L, and Carrie Moyer.^{[7][8][9][10]} She edited the first monograph of Samara Golden's work, The Flat Side of the Knife, published by MoMA PS1 in 2014.^[11] She served on the faculty of the M.A. program in Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts, New York from 2017-2019.^[12]

Locks received a BA from Brown University and an MA from the University of Southern California (USC). She was a 2018 fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York City.^{[citation needed]}

• How the podcast ‘Hope & Dread’ examines the turmoil affecting art and artists
• MOCA in Los Angeles Appoints Mia Locks as Senior Curator
• Whitney.org - Whitney Biennial 2017
• Why the Whitney's Humanist, Pro-Diversity Biennial Is a Revelation (NY Times)
• The 2017 Whitney Biennial Is a Moving, Forward-Looking Tour de Force—a Triumph (ArtNews)
• The New Whitney Biennial Is the Most Political in Decades (New York Magazine)
• Openings: Samara Golden (Artforum)
• Math Bass: Codes and Keys (W Magazine)
• MoMAPS1.org - Greater New York 2015
• Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (Artforum)
• At 'Greater New York,' Rising Art Stars Meet the Old School (NY Times)
• Im Heung-soon Explores the Horrors Women Endure During War (NY Times)
• MoMAPS1.org - The Little Things Could Be Dearer