Dr. Ashlea Espinal joined the Whitney Western Art Museum in November 2021 as Curatorial Assistant and was promoted to Assistant Curator in May 2023. Before joining the Whitney, Espinal completed a MA in Art and Museum Studies at Georgetown University in 2010, and her doctorate in Native American Art History at the University of Oklahoma in 2019.

Espinal has served as an art history adjunct instructor from 2019 to 2020 for both the University of Oklahoma and Bacone College. Additionally, she has held numerous internships at museums throughout the country, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and the Denver Art Museum. Her area of focus is contemporary Native arts, and her research and curatorial work merge the disciplines of art history, visual culture, and cultural memory. She is particularly interested in how knowledge is stored and transmitted through art, and how this enables history to be visually written through art and objects.