Elizabeth Harney is an art historian, curator, and critic based at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on global modernisms and contemporary African art. She was the first curator of contemporary arts at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian (1999-2003) where she wrote the first blueprint for collecting these materials at the institution.

She is the author of In Senghor’s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995 (Duke 2004), editor of Ethiopian Passages: Contemporary Art from the Diaspora (Philip Wilson/Smithsonian Institution: 2003) and co-editor and co-curator of Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art (5 Continents Press, 2007).