Samia A. Halaby is an artist, activist, and scholar living and working in New York. Halaby is recognized as a pioneer of abstract painting. Since beginning her artistic career in the late 1950s, she has exhibited in museums, galleries, and art fairs throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America. Her work is housed in public and private collections around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Institut du Monde Arabe, and the Palestinian Museum.
She received her academic training in the U.S., Halaby and has been active in American academia, teaching art at the university level for over twenty years, a decade of which was spent as an associate professor at Yale School of Art She was the first woman to hold the position of Associate Professor at the Yale School of Art. She also taught at the University of Hawaii, Indiana University, the Cooper Union, the University of Michigan, and the Kansas City Art Institute.
Based in New York since the 1970s, Halaby has long been active in the city's art scene, mainly through independent and non-profit art spaces and artist-run initiatives, in addition, she participated in leftist political organizing for various causes.