Laura (she/her) is an artist, meditation practitioner, museum curator, art educator, Kundalini Yoga teacher, and founder of the stress-reduction coaching business Breathing Space | Dr. Laura Thompson, LLC.

She brings three decades in the arts and education fields to those who wish to build confidence in their innate wisdom and utilize their creativity as a healing practice to bring resilience, balance, and calm to their life. Laura offers retreats and online workshops as well as one-on-one coaching.

From 2002-23, Laura was MASS MoCA’s founding director of education + Kidspace gallery curator where she designed award-winning community partnership public programs and curated 30 exhibitions with notable artists.

She holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College and has added to her credentials a 200 hour certificate in Meditation Teaching from the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, where she is on the R & R faculty, and is working towards a 200 hour certificate in Kundalini Yoga Teaching from Yoga Farm Ithaca.

She is a meditation instructor at the Berkshire Yoga, Dance, and Fitness Center, and an academic, teaching innovative ways to integrate mindfulness into art education, most recently for graduate students at UMASS Dartmouth. Laura is an independent curator; this fall, she installed an exhibition of Federico Uribe’s art for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

Laura taught art history and arts administration courses at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts for over ten years.

She practices what she preaches in her personal abstract expressionist and symbolist oil paintings, and has a studio at NU Arts in Pittsfield, MA.