Cristiana Perrella, born in Rome in 1965, is an art curator and critic who directed the Contemporary Arts Programme at The British School at Rome from 1998 to 2008 and subsequently the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato from 2018 to 2021. She founded and curated SACS- Sportello arte contemporanea della Sicilia (Sicilian Contemporary Art Desk) for the RISO museum in Palermo (2007-2009) and curated the art and science project of Fondazione Marino Golinelli, Bologna (2009-2018). As an independent curator, she has collaborated with Italian and international institutions, including MAXXI, Rome, the Bienal de Valencia, IKSV, Istanbul, and Fondazione Prada.
Also actively involved in the academic field, she has taught “Phenomenology of Contemporary Art” at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chieti and at the IED in Rome. She currently teaches “Management and Economics of the Arts and Cultural Institutions” on the Master's degree course in Theory and History of the Arts and Image at the San Raffaele University in Milan, as well as having published numerous texts and monographs.
Last March, the Municipality of Rome entrusted her with the artistic direction of MACRO, the capital's Museum of Contemporary Art.
Since 6 September 2025, by papal nomination, she has been the new president of the Pontificia Insigne Accademia di Belle Arti e Lettere dei Virtuosi al Pantheon, a role that continues her existing collaboration with the Holy See: she was curator of the contemporary art programme “Conciliazione 5” for the Dicastery for Culture and Education, inaugurated on the occasion of the Jubilee with a street art window open throughout the Holy Year, and destined to remain beyond, based on an idea by Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery.