THE SMITHSONIAN’S National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) named a new deputy director on Jan. 10. Michelle Commander is joining the Washington, D.C., museum in the No. 2 role. She arrives from the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she served most recently as deputy director of research and strategic initiatives.
At NMAAHC, Commander will help lead the overall management and strategic planning and development of the museum. She will also support the $350 million Living History endowment campaign, advance the museum’s technology goals, oversee learning and engagement partnerships across the Smithsonian, and oversee the museum’s Education and Publications offices.
Michelle Commander. | Photos Courtesy Smithsonian NMAAHC
Commander succeeds Kinshasha Holman Conwill, the founding deputy director of NMAAHC. News of the appointment was announced in conjunction with the retirement of Conwill, which was effective Dec. 31.
A curator, educator, and writer, Commander is a scholar of slavery and memory, Black geographies, and Afrofuturism. She was an associate professor at the University of Tennessee before being hired at the Schomburg in Harlem. First, she served as the center’s associate director and curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, before being named deputy director of research and strategic initiatives.
Commander earned doctorate and master of arts degrees in American studies and ethnicity from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She also holds a master of science in curriculum and instruction from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., and a bachelor of arts in English from Charleston Southern University in North Charleston, S.C.
She is the consulting curator for “Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room,” an ongoing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“With her wide-ranging work on global slavery, West Africa, and Afrofuturism, Michelle [Commander] is deeply anchored in history with an understanding of how historic collections intersect with our contemporary world.” — NMAAHC Director Kevin Young
Commander starts at the Smithsonian on Jan. 30. With her arrival, the African American museum’s top two leaders hail from the Schomburg Center. NMAAHC Director Kevin Young joined the museum in January 2021, after serving as director of the Schomburg for about four years (2016-2020).
“With her wide-ranging work on global slavery, West Africa, and Afrofuturism, Michelle is deeply anchored in history with an understanding of how historic collections intersect with our contemporary world,” Young said in a statement. “She has a demonstrated record of embracing innovation to expand a museum’s reach to various communities.” CT
FIND MORE about Michelle Commander on her website
BOOKSHELF
“Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic” and “Avidly Reads: Passages” are both authored by Michelle Commander. She also edited the anthology “Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition,” which includes a foreword by Kevin Young.
