Laura Herman (1988, Brussels) is a curator and writer. She is the artistic co-director of NW, centre for contemporary art in Aalst, and serves as the course director for the postgraduate Curatorial Studies programme, established in 1999 by KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts, Ghent University, and the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent (S.M.A.K.).
In 2022, Herman was awarded the main prize of the Prize for Young Art Criticism (Prijs voor de Jonge Kunstkritiek) for her essay exploring the intersection of Camille Henrot's work and motherhood, and she is currently letter writer for Rekto:Verso.
Prior to her current roles, Herman served as a curator at La Loge in Brussels, a space dedicated to contemporary art, architecture, and theory, where she curated various projects including Uriel Orlow's 'Learning from Artemisia,' Carey Young's 'Palais de Justice,' and Zoë Paul's 'Despina.' From 2016 to 2020, she held the position of editor at De Witte Raaf, a bimonthly art journal distributed in Belgium and The Netherlands, and was a theory tutor at the department of Contextual Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven during that period. Between 2018 and 2020, Herman served as the curator of 'The New Sanctuary,' the 12th Satellite programme held at Jeu de Paume in Paris, CAPC in Bordeaux, and the Museo Amparo de Puebla in Mexico.
She has co-edited the publication "The Floor is Uneven. Does It Slope?" (Mousse Publishing, 2019) and has been involved as a co-author in other publications including "Herewith the Clues" (Sternberg Press, 2019) and "Experience Traps" (Motto Distribution, 2018). Herman's reviews and essays have been featured in renowned art publications such as Mousse, Frieze, Spike Art Quarterly, Metropolis M, Bomb, rekto:verso, and others. She has curated exhibitions and events such as 'Family Fictions' at Extra City Kunsthal (2019), 'Natural Capital (Modal Alam)' in collaboration with Charlotte Dumoncel D’Argence and Offshore Studio as part of Europalia Indonesia's Curatorial Award at Bozar, Brussels (2018), 'Definition Series: Infrastructure' at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (2016), 'Third Nature' at the Hessel Museum in New York (2016), 'The Office for Doubts and Desires' at P! in New York (2016), and 'Wild Horses & Trojan Dreams' at Marres in Maastricht (2013). From 2013 to 2015, she worked as an assistant curator at Z33, House for Contemporary Art.
Herman is a board member of Auguste Orts, a Brussels-based production and distribution platform founded by artists Herman Asselberghs, Sven Augustijnen, Manon de Boer, and Anouk De Clercq. She is also a member of AICA, the association of international art critics, and Outline, an independent platform that supports the transdisciplinary work of Begüm Erciyas, David Weber-Krebs, and Ula Sickle.
She obtained an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, in 2016, and an MA in Comparative Modern Literature from Ghent University in 2010.