Organizing Committee
Dr. Kevin Dumouchelle
Kevin D. Dumouchelle joined the National Museum of African Art in October 2016. His latest exhibition, Heroes: Principles of African Greatness (2019) was recently awarded a Smithsonian Excellence in Exhibitions Award. Dumouchelle was the curatorial lead for Visionary: Viewpoints on Africa’s Arts (2017), the museum’s award-winning permanent galleries developed with team members Christine Mullen Kreamer and Karen Milbourne, which exhibit the full range of time, place, and media represented in the National Museum’s collection. He additionally serves as coordinating curator for Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange in Medieval Saharan Africa (2020), as he did for World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean (2018) and Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women (2018). Previously, Dumouchelle served a decade at the Brooklyn Museum as the curator in charge of the arts of both Africa and the Pacific Islands. He has written books and articles on a range of topics and curated exhibitions on both contemporary and historical African art. Dumouchelle holds a Ph.D., M.Phil, and M.A. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University, New York. He is also the recipient of a first-class master’s degree in history from Oxford University and a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
Dr. Karen E. Milbourne
Dr. Karen E. Milbourne is Senior Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Previously, she was Associate Curator of African Art and Department Head for the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific Islands at The Baltimore Museum of Art, and prior to that, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Kentucky. Since joining the NMAfA, she has curated the exhibition series Artists in Dialogue (2009, 2012) and the focus shows, A Brave New World (2010), Market Symphony by Emeka Ogboh (2016), and Jim Chuchu’s Invocations (2017) and provided the in-house supervision for the exhibitions, Yinka Shonibare MBE (2009), Central Nigeria Unmasked (2011) The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists (2014). Her traveling exhibition, Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa (2013) is accompanied by an award-winning scholarly book published by Monacelli Press. She co-curated Senses of Time: Video and Film-based Art of Africa with Dr. Polly Roberts of LACMA and UCLA, Views of Africa at the National Air and Space Museum with Andrew Johnson, and the award-winning Visionary: Perspectives on Africa’s Arts (2017) at the NMAfA. Her traveling exhibition, I Am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africa opened on June 20, 2019 and its accompanying book received a 2021 Smithsonian Secretary’s Research Prize. Currently, she is working on the exhibitions, Iké Udé: Nollywood Portraits (2022) and From the Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya with Ayana V. Jackson (2023).
Dr. Matt Shindell
Dr. Matthew Shindell is a historian of science whose work focuses on the history of the earth and planetary sciences. He curates the Museum’s collection of spacecraft, instruments, and other artifacts related to the exploration and study of the solar system. He is the lead curator of the Museum's Futures in Space exhibition and co-host of the AirSpace Podcast. Shindell received a BS in Biology from Arizona State University (1999), an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2001), an MS in Biology: Biology and Society from Arizona State University (2004), and a Ph.D. in History of Science from the University of California, San Diego (2011).
Dr. Michelle Joan Wilkinson
Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D. is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), where is working to expand the museum’s collections in architecture and design. In 2018, she served as lead organizer for the museum’s three-day symposium, “Shifting the Landscape: Black Architects and Planners, 1968 to Now.” In 2019-2020, Wilkinson was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior to her role at NMAAHC, Wilkinson was Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture. She has also worked at the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. As a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in 2012, Wilkinson completed a residency at the Design Museum in London. Her ongoing research project, “V is for Veranda,” about architectural heritage in the Anglophone Caribbean, has been presented to international audiences in Suriname, England, India, and the United States. Wilkinson’s most recent work explores issues of representation in architectural renderings. Wilkinson holds BA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD from Emory University.
Dr. Kevin Strait
Kevin Strait is a museum curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Since 2010, he has worked on the research, development and acquisition of objects for several of the museum’s permanent exhibitions. Kevin is currently curating a temporary exhibition entitled, “Afrofuturism - A History of Black Futures” that will open at the NMAAHC in 2023, and co-authoring a book to accompany the exhibit. Kevin is a graduate of Wesleyan University and received his Ph.D. in American Studies at the George Washington University.