Halima Taha is an art professional whose curatorial, art advisory, appraisal, strategic planning, and professional speaking services develop corporate, academic, and civic programs and audiences. She is best known for her groundbreaking best seller, Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas, the first book to validate collecting fine art, printmaking, and photography by Americans of African descent as viable assets and commodities within the marketplace. It was also used as a choice PBS membership incentive, raising three times its fundraising goal. Since its release, this title provided solid market criteria for publishers to print more artist monographs and African American art history books, independent from museum shows within the first two decades of the 21st century.

In addition, her expertise provided the foundation, in conjunction with the National Black Fine Art Show (1997-2009), for cultivating and educating a global audience that enabled Swann Galleries to successfully establish the first international African American auction category in 2008. Her work was also the catalyst for ushering major museums to actively pursue collections of African American Art for exhibition and acquisition, within the first two decades of this century. Halima is a committed arts advocate nurturing the development, documentation and acquisition of Black visual culture as a professional speaker and arts writer.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and New York University, earning Liberal Arts and Arts Management & Cultural Policy degrees; as well as a Certificate in Appraisal Studies from New York University and the Appraisers Association of America. Halima is also USPAP (Uniform Professional Appraisal Practice) compliant and a member of ArtTable and the College Art Association. She co-authored Thirty Years of American Printmaking: Brandywine Workshop and contributed to several books and magazines about contemporary art, collecting, appraising and arts management. Her commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to critically think about art and how to inspire diverse audiences includes participation as a keynote speaker and panelist for many museum, academic and corporate programs. The breadth of Halima’s experience includes co-owning a Gramercy Park gallery in NYC, former faculty and Director of the Gordon Parks Gallery at the College of New Rochelle in New York and Adjunct Professor and Curator for Scott Kaplan Gallery at Bloomfield College in New Jersey.