Betsy Odom (b. Amory, Mississippi, 1980) is an artist, curator, and educator based in Chicago. They hold an MFA from the Yale University School of Art and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Odom has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad, with solo and group exhibitions at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the McNay Museum, San Antonio; the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Glen Ellyn; Journal Gallery, Brooklyn; Amel Bourorina Gallery, Berlin; and Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey, Western Exhibitions, and LVL3 Gallery.
Selected solo exhibitions include Butchcraft at the DePaul Art Museum, Continental Breakfast at the 21c Museum Hotel Chicago, Registry at ThreeWalls, Sis Boom Bah at the Hyde Park Art Center, and Betsy Odom at 4WPS.
Odom’s awards include two Illinois Arts Council Grants, the Chances Dances Critical Fierceness Prize, and multiple grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Their work is held in the collections of the West Collection and the DePaul Art Museum.
In 2026, Odom’s work will be featured at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in Get In the Game, a large-scale touring exhibition curated by SFMOMA exploring the intersections of art and sport. Their work will also appear in Sport and Spectator at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and in a two-person exhibition with Margaret Wharton at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, Indiana.
