Cochran worked most recently with artist Gregory Sale on his year-long project Future IDs on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. She was previously Director and Chief Curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, where she doubled the museum’s annual attendance, increased its earned revenue and vastly expanded its presence on social media. During her tenure there, she curated eight exhibitions, including major projects with Betye Saar (2016) and Postcommodity (2015). She also organized a diverse series of programs including discussions with Founding Guerrilla Girl Kathe Kollwitz, Robert Irwin, Tom Sachs, Henry Rollins, Megan Rapinoe, and Dan Savage among many others, as well as running innovative events such as national film premiers, stand-up comedy, a book club, maker events, an escape room and collaboration with the City of Scottsdale to celebrate diversity.

 

As Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Phoenix Art Museum, Cochran organized fifteen exhibitions including premiering and traveling Kehinde Wiley’s Memling Series in 2013. Under her leadership, the museum acquired over 200 works of art by artists such as Dan Graham, Sui Jianguo, Glenn Ligon, Maya Lin, Ruben Ochoa, Jennifer Steinkamp, Lawrence Weiner and Kehinde Wiley. Earlier in her career, she held curatorial positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She earned her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and has a Masters from Université de la Sorbonne, Paris IV. In 2015, she was participated in the Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University.