Kevin D. Dumouchelle joined the National Museum of African Art in October 2016. He was the lead curator for Visionary: Viewpoints on Africa’s Arts, the museum’s recent, award-winning permanent galleries, which present the full range of time, place, and media represented in the National Museum’s collection. He has served as the NMAfA in-house curator for World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean and Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women.
Previously, Dumouchelle served a decade at the Brooklyn Museum as the curator in charge of the arts of both Africa and the Pacific Islands. At Brooklyn, he conceived two award-winning re-installations of the African collection: African Innovations (2011) and Double Take: African Innovations (2014). He has written books and articles on a range of topics and curated exhibitions on both contemporary and historical African art, including Power Incarnate: Allan Stone’s Collection of Sculpture from the Congo (2011) at the Bruce Museum and the Brooklyn Museum presentations of Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui (2013) and Disguise: Masks and Global African Art (2016).
Dumouchelle earned a Ph.D, M.Phil., and M.A. in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University. His doctoral research in Ghana examined architectural modernity in Asante. 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.
