Julie Walsh is a Chicago-based curator specializing in contemporary Asian art, immersive technologies and digital art. Ms. Walsh has been active in the art world for 40 years. She founded the Walsh Gallery, which exhibited contemporary Asian art for 18 years. She is also co-founder of MIRAA (Mixed Reality Academy for the Arts). As an expert in digital art, she is a frequent speaker and panel moderator at national and international festivals, biennales, universities and art fairs. These events include: VREurope (Amsterdam), VRHAM! (Hamburg), Virtual Worlds (Munich), Ars Electronica (Linz), the Cameroon National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Recto VRso (Laval), SxSW (Austin), NYU (New York), AAMC (Art Association of Museum Curators in New York), SAIC (Chicago), Luxembourg Art Fair (Luxembourg), Miami Basel (Miami), Paris+ (Paris), Istanbul Digital Art Festival (Istanbul) and the NFT Biennial at PSM Zorlu (Istanbul).
In 2021, Walsh organized the inaugural exhibition at the MEET Digital Culture Center (Milan) for her first virtual exhibition. Since then, she has designed virtual reality exhibitions as well as hybrid and solo shows. She is also a regular lecturer at MEET. Ms. Walsh has led workshops on XR as well as art created for blockchain. In 2021, she was the second curator invited to exhibit on Feral File. In addition, she co-organized the launch of the NFT Biennial at PSM Zorlu in Istanbul in January 2023 and co-organized the Istanbul Digital Art Festival in June 2023. In March 2023, she moderated a panel at SxSW alongside Jean-Michel Jarre, Hsin-Chien Huang and Maud Clauvier on how XR is revolutionizing the music industry.
In 2024, Walsh was a “Best of Tech” jury member at the FilmGate Interactive Festival (Miami), a mentor for WAC Museums, co-curator of IDAF2024 and will appear in an episode of TRT 2 entitled The Digital Form of Art, as well as in an interview for Kent Bye’s Voices of VR podcast. She is currently an advisor to the MEET Digital Culture Center (Milan) and a member of the jury for interactive and immersive art at the Lumens Prize (London) for the 2024 and 2025 editions.
In November 2024, Ms. Walsh will organize Living in the (UN)real, a solo exhibition by Hsin-Chien Huang at the MEET Digital Culture Center. At the same time, the immersive room will host The Eye and I, a collaboration between Hsin-Chien Huang and Jean-Michel Jarre.