Stephanie Cristello (b. 1991, Toronto, ON) is a contemporary art critic, curator, and author based in Chicago, IL. Her work focuses on artists who critically engage with the image and its role in visual culture. Through the lens of Classics and mythology, her writing concentrates on the intersection of ancient narratives and conceptual practice post-1960. Her research is motivated by contemporary works that interrogate how language, text, and the use of poetic devices influence and shape the cultural and historical structures that surround us. She has worked internationally across a variety of platforms, including exhibitions, panels and symposia, editorial and publishing, and writing on practices of art and architecture. 

Cristello was previously the Senior Editor US for ArtSlant (2012–18) and the founding Editor-in-Chief of THE SEEN, Chicago’s International Journal of Contemporary & Modern Art (2013–20). Her writing has been published in ArtReview, BOMB Magazine, Elephant Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Mousse Magazine, OSMOS, and Portable Gray. She has delivered panels at the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for Architecture, Independent Curators International (ICI), the Terra Foundation for American Art, Manifest Institute, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and Nordic Talks. Alongside these programs, Cristello has been frequently invited as a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the École des Beaux Arts in Lyon (France). She has participated in curatorial exchange programs throughout Europe, including France (Institut français), The Netherlands (Mondriaan Fonds), Denmark (Danish Arts Foundation), and Sweden (Iaspis). She has served on juries for Art Hub Copenhagen, Bemis Center, Salon de Montrouge, the Sarr Prize, and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, among others.

She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 with a Liberal Arts Thesis in Visual Critical Studies. She served as the Artistic Director of EXPO CHICAGO (2013–2020) and is currently the Director / Curator at Chicago Manual Style. From 2020–21 she was as a Guest Curator at Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark) and the Malmö Art Museum (Sweden), as well as a Curatorial Advisor to the 2020 Busan Biennale (South Korea), which traveled to the Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry at the University of Chicago (US). In 2017, she was part of the collaboration for the first US-based Hors les Murs satellite of the Palais de Tokyo in Chicago at the DuSable Museum of African American History.

Cristello has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues nationally and internationally, including monographs on the work of Lap-See Lam (Bonniers Konsthall / Lenz Press, 2021), Mamma Andersson and Tal R (Kunsten Museum / Malmö Art Museum, 2022). She is the author of Theodora Allen: Saturnine (Motto / Kunsthal Aarhus, 2021), Sustainable Societies for the Future (Motto / Malmö Art Museum, 2021), and the forthcoming book Barbara Kasten: Architecture and Film 2015–2020 (Skira, 2022). In 2020, she was awarded a publication grant by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.