Kate Hadley Toftness

Chicago Archives + Artists Project Director
E: khtoftness@sixtyinchesfromcenter.org
W: chicagoarchivesandartists.org

Kate Hadley Toftness is a writer and organizer of things and culture. She focuses on archives engagement and collections-based programs that promote social justice and the creation of new artistic work. With the Sixty team, she leads the Chicago Archives + Artists Project, an initiative that connects artists and writers with archives that give space to voices on the margins. 

Kate is also the Senior Advancement Manager at Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art and co-curated Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts: Thinking about History at the Block Museum of Art (2021). Previously, Kate was the Archival Collections and Public Engagement Manager for Rebuild Foundation, where she managed the inaugural installation and activation of Theaster Gates’ collections at the Stony Island Arts Bank. She believes that radical access to collections creates powerful connections between individual expression and shared experience. Kate received her bachelor’s from Yale University and an interdisciplinary humanities master’s from the University of Chicago with a focus on art history and creative writing. She is based in Savannah, GA and Chicago, IL.