CYDNEY PAYTON lives and works in Monterey, California.
Payton's writing and editing work encompasses fiction, poetry, and essays on artists and art. Over the last twenty-five years, she has contributed texts and research to the fields of art, architecture and landscape architecture. Payton's curatorial practice centers on contemporary art and experimental architecture. She is recognized for presenting living artists alongside the significant artists who came before them. She has curated over a hundred exhibitions on thematics relevant to the contemporary moment, often of regional and international note, as well as solo museum exhibitions, many a first for the artist.
In a previous career, she was both a museum director and chief curator. Her tenure in the museum field began at the Boulder Art Center which she transformed into the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), Colorado's first non-collecting contemporary art museum. At BMoCA, she created an interdisciplinary program of visual art, new plays, dance/movement, and experimental film and music. While there, she also built the theater at BMoCA with Kevin Causey, Director of Continental Divide Theater. At the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA DENVER), her curatorial vision looked to social practices, extending the institution beyond its walls, and to questions about the relationships between art and architecture. While at MCA DENVER, she built a new audience for contemporary art in Colorado. This led to the creation of a conceptual process for the building of a new museum. Working with architect David Adjaye, for his first US commission, the new building became the first gold LEED certified museum in the US and a RIBA awarding-winning architectural gem.
Throughout her career she has served on local, national and international juries such as the Taishin Art Awards Taiwan and the Obama Campaign Poster Award responsible for the selection of the infamous HOPE image by Shepherd Fairey. She has also received numerous awards for her work and leadership such as being noted as one of twenty-five Leaders in the Arts (four years) by The Denver Post.
Payton's career in the arts began when she founded and directed the Cydney Payton Gallery, later PAYTON | RULE. The legacy of those galleries continues with RULE Denver|Marfa. She holds an MA in Curatorial Practice with an emphasis on Architectural History and Theory from California College of the Arts.
In 2022, Payton founded MAZZY PRESS, a small editions press dedicated to collaborations between writers and artists.
CURRENT PROJECTS (2022-2025)
POETEXTS poems by George Emilio Sanchez with images by Patty Ortiz, MAZZY PRESS, 2025
A book for the curatorial project Morley Baer: Modernism in Northern California Architecture. February-April 2025, Monterey Museum of Art
Don’t Look Away. Novel. Fiction. (forthcoming)
Martha Casanave: Girl Photographer. Editor. (forthcoming)
Todd Cole: The Language of Gardens: Brick, Concrete, Glass, Metal, Stone. Editor & Contributor. (forthcoming)
CV available upon request.