Our Story

Assembly Room was a curatorial project founded in 2018 by independent curators Natasha Becker, Paola Gallio, and Yulia Topchiy to create community among women-identifying curators living and working in New York City and beyond.

Having worked individually in the art world for more than a decade and curating shows on our own, we felt it was time to create a collaborative community of women fueled by our passion to serve and to succeed by coming together.

The global Covid-19 pandemic dramatically changed our lives and the lives of our community. We relinquished our brick and mortar exhibition space and continued supporting our community online. As optimism returns and cities reopen, it has been rewarding to take stock of all that we achieved in the past three years:

We adopted a philanthropic and collaborative model that supported numerous independent curators in the process of launching exhibitions and organized countless public dialogues between artists, curators, and the communities we serve. We lived our mission by investing in the professional development opportunities for women through forging strategic collaborations and partnerships to support the growth of our community. We navigated the stressors of the pandemic and the transition from pandemic restrictions, without losing our sisterhood and sense of humor!

We are still emerging from an epic 2020 and evaluating the different paths that lay before us in 2021.

For now, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude to our incredible artists, curators, collectors, collaborators, friends, family, and (online) visitors.  

Stay strong everyone and keep fighting for a better world.

Yulia Topchiy, Natasha Becker, Paola Gallio

Co-Founders