Ameli M. Klein examines how cultural narratives are made and maintained. Her research centers on the ideological dimensions of visual and material culture, unpacking how images can construct, circulate, and naturalize truth. Her time at the Bard Graduate Center focuses on archival research across New York’s press photography and ephemera collections.

Klein is the curator of the sixth edition of the F. I. G. Festival for Illustration and Graphics in Sofia, Bulgaria. She is the director of Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Germany, where she recently curated the five-part exhibition cycle Genius Loci: Notes on Places (2025) that brought together works by Ruth Beraha, Maeve Brennan, Zuzanna Czebatul, Kevin Jerome Everson, Hélène Fauquet, and more. Grounded in the writings of Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856–1935) the nomadic project traced how historical forces sediment in images, institutions, and places, a methodology that her current research extends into the history of mass media and graphic culture. She has held visiting positions at the IZK Institute for Contemporary Art at TU Graz and the Roaming Academy of the Dutch Art Institute and was an EPIC Fellow with the AAMC Engagement Program for International Curators (Terra Foundation and Art Fund) and participant in the 2021 Anthropocene Campus Venice of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the HKW. A publication accompanying Genius Loci: Notes on Places is forthcoming with Deutscher Kunstverlag (2026).