Art world powerhouse Thelma Golden is the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

After graduating from Smith with a BA in art history and African-American studies, Golden interned at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which led to a curatorial assistant job at the Whitney. Following a brief stint at the Jamaica Arts Center, Golden moved back to the Whitney, and in 1991, at 25, she became the museum's first African-American curator. She left the Whitney unexpectedly in 1998 after a staff reorganization by the museum's new director, Maxwell Anderson. Collector Peter Norton quickly swooped in and offered her a post as his curator of special projects, a job she held for a year before returning to the Studio Museum as a curator in 2000. When Lowery Stokes Sims stepped down as the Studio Museum's director in 2005, Golden replaced her. An art world icon not least because she's a stylish black woman in a profession dominated by dull white men, Golden has established a reputation in recent years as the preeminent arbiter and champion of black artists. [Image via Getty]