gloria j. wilson is Associate Professor (with tenure) of Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University and a founder of the Racial Justice Studio. She is an artist, public scholar, and producer and host of podcasts that explore race, creativity, and cultural memory through storytelling. Her research and creative work engage the intersections of structural racism, racial identity formation, and liberatory aesthetic praxes.
Her scholarship, grounded in Black Studies, transnational feminisms, cultural theory, and critical arts-based inquiry, pushes the boundaries of art and visual culture education. Through these frameworks, she interrogates how race and aesthetics might be engaged otherwise, especially through public-facing creative practices.
gloria is the creator of Aesthetic Movements: A Digital Storytelling Project, an arts-based podcast that reimagines archival research through the voices and creative lives of artists and artist-educators of color. She also co-hosted Race/Remix, a podcast series from the Racial Justice Studio, with featured episodes including “When Justice Goes Viral” with Ruha Benjamin, “A Typeface for Change” with Silas Munro, and “Restaging Classical Music” with the Imani Winds.
Her most recent editorial project, A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back, honors the legacies of Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga by responding to contemporary political struggle, transformation, and solidarity among women of color feminists—offering readers space for renewal and healing.
Before earning her PhD at the University of Georgia, gloria taught visual art in secondary schools for 13 years. She is a Fulbright Fellow (Tokyo and Ogi Saga, Japan), a Project Zero presenter (Harvard Graduate School of Education), and an invited speaker/artist for institutions including Spelman College Museum of Art’s BLACK BOX series and the Belcourt Theater Science on Screen series. She has led equity-centered pedagogical workshops for the National Art Education Association and arts institutions nationwide.
gloria’s leadership extends into public education, community partnerships, and cultural policy. She has served as Art Program Director for the Athens-Clarke County Migrant Education Program, a founding member of NAEA’s National Task Force on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (2018–19), and a member of Nashville’s Racial Equity in Arts Leadership (REAL) cohort. She continues to facilitate racial equity workshops at the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), The Albany Museum of Art (Albany, GA), and other public institutions.
Her current research, podcasting, and arts practice focus on Black compositional strategies, sonic and visual culture, and archival disruption as tools for awakening social transformation.
