Known for her support and championship of emerging artists, Golden created a site-specific commissioning program for the Whitney’s branch museum at Altria (formerly Philip Morris), and presented projects by meaningful artists: Alison Saar, Glenn Ligon, Gary Simmons (artist), Romare Bearden, Matthew McCaslin, Suzanne McClelland, Lorna Simpson, Jacob Lawrence and Leone & MacDonald.

She became director of the Whitney Museum's outpost in midtown Manhattan (since closed) in 1991 and organized many notable exhibitions, including the controversial 1993 Biennial, directed by Elisabeth Sussman Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art (1994–95) Bob Thompson: A Retrospective (1998) Heart, Mind, Body, Soul: New Work from the Collection (1998) and Hindsight: Recent Work from the Permanent Collection (1999). She was then a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1988 to 1998. Golden's first curatorial position was at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1987. While at Smith she worked as an intern at the Studio Museum in 1985. She graduated from Buckley Country Day School in 1980 and earned a BA in Art History and African-American Studies from Smith College in 1987.

She had her first hands-on training as a senior in high school at the New Lincoln School, training as a curatorial apprentice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Thelma Golden grew up in Queens, New York.

Gary Simmons by Thelma Golden