The Visual Arts Administration alum took on a lead role at New Orleans Museum of Art.
Photo by Taylor Hunter. Courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Anne Collins Smith (MA ’98, Visual Arts Administration) has become the first Black American and the first Black native New Orleanian to hold a full curatorial role at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).
Smith’s 25-year career in arts leadership was not the original plan; she had initially intended to be an attorney, but an iconic court case dissuaded her.
“When the 1995 OJ Simpson case was in the news, I think we all had our doubts about some things,” says Smith. “I realized I didn’t want to argue for something I doubted, so I decided I wanted to be an advocate in a different way.”
Smith attended Spelman College in Georgia, first as an English major but then making her way to art history. Along with Morehouse and Clark Atlanta University, Spelman is part of the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which allows students in art history and curatorial studies to take advantage of resources throughout the collective.
“The art scene in Atlanta was centered around the university area, and after I graduated, I wanted to expand my horizons,” says Smith. “One of my Spelman art history professors, Arturo Lindsay, was an NYU alum, and he told me, ‘You must go to New York.’”
Photo by Taylor Hunter. Courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
After moving to New York City, Smith enrolled in the NYU Steinhardt Visual Arts Administration program, an experience she says was “getting [her] feet wet into the art world writ large.” After graduating, she spent several years as the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, then returned to Spelman, where she spent nearly 19 years as the curator of collections for the college’s Museum of Fine Art.
After a few years as the director of Xavier University Art Gallery in New Orleans, Smith broadened her scope and scale with the move to NOMA last fall. Her goal is to make the museum and its programs resonate even more with the multiplicity of audiences who both live in and visit New Orleans.
“This is a step I’ve been preparing for my whole career,” says Smith, who did her master’s thesis on how museums can attract more diverse audiences, specifically Black youth. “People still think that museums are part of an ivory tower of some kind, and I want to continue to shift that paradigm. NOMA is a few miles away from the historic center of town. However, the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden alone is an irresistible incentive to venture outside the French Quarter. City Park is an oasis, yet it has a troubled past that continues to inform perceptions about access and welcome. Many ‘traditional’ encyclopedic art museums grapple with the stereotype of being places that aren’t necessarily ‘for the people.’ My personal charge is to dispel that myth.”
Smith aims to offer uplifting programming that speaks to the audiences she wants to invite and attract to NOMA.
“I want people to ‘see themselves’ at NOMA,” says Smith. “I’ve been in the field for 25 years, and museums are hotspots at this moment, which has been amplified by movements like Obama’s portrait [by Kehinde Wiley]. Witnessing your thesis in action and making an impact is thrilling.”
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