Maria L. Kelly is the Assistant Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art. Maria was the curatorial assistant in the High’s photography department from 2011 to 2016 and returned to the museum in 2019. During her time at the High, Maria has helped organize more than twenty-five photography installations. Her exhibitions at the High include Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing (2025), Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space (2024), Underexposed: Women Photographers from the Collection (2021), What Is Near: Reflections on Home (2016), Helen Levitt: In the Street (2015), and Leonard Freed: Black in White America (2014). She was the venue curator for Deana Lawson (2022), co-organized by the ICA Boston and MoMA PS1, and André Kertész: Postcards from Paris (2022), organized by the Art Institute of Chicago.
Maria holds a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Georgia, both in art history. Her master’s thesis, The Unfixed Landscape: Meghann Riepenhoff & Matthew Brandt, considered experimental bodies of work by both artists within the context of the history of photography and the Land Art movement. Previously, she worked at The Sir Elton John Photography Collection and the Brooklyn Museum and has held internships at The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Georgia Museum of Art.