At the beginning of her career as an art curator, Anne Collins Smith was a graduate student seeking to answer a question for her master’s thesis: Why don’t Black youth go to museums?
Her conclusion was simple.
“We don’t go to museums because we don’t see us on the walls,” Smith said.
She found that if people don’t feel represented through art, there’s nothing for them to resonate with – and nothing to draw them to a museum.
“I challenge it, but I don’t think the viewer has to do all the work, either. So this is where the institutions come in. I think this is where I come in here,” she said.
In February, Smith was named the chief curator of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Smith, a New Orleans native, is the first Black woman to hold the position in the museum’s 114-year history.
In her role, Smith keeps her thesis front of mind as she guides the museum’s curators and oversees how collections are showcased. Her goal is to connect as many audiences as possible to NOMA’s art.
And as a proud New Orleanian, she feels compelled to keep the museum grounded in New Orleans culture and foster greater community with audiences.
“New Orleans is the muse. She is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in America … it’s really about highlighting that and honoring that,” Smith said.
A consummate curator
Smith first developed an interest in art curation as an undergraduate student at Spelman College, an all-women’s HBCU in Atlanta.
Her first experience as a curator was as a curatorial assistant for the first exhibition held at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in 1996, “Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African American Women Artists.” She described it as a “transformative experience.”
After completing graduate school at New York University, she worked at the Saint Louis Art Museum and later, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. She then returned to Atlanta and spent 18 years as the curator of collections at Spelman’s museum.
“Its mission was to highlight and focus on works by and about women of the African diaspora, because we know there was no canon really that welcomed them; an outside canon,” she said. “So we made that canon. We created that canon.”
Toward the end of her tenure at Spelman, she helped establish a curatorial studies minor, developed to give students hands-on job experience in art curation.
Through this, Smith was able to create opportunities for students that weren’t available when she was in college.
“I got that example, very young and very early, of what a Black woman curator looks like, of what a Black woman curator can do, of the impact their work can have. And I got that through folks like Miss Anne,” said Ming Joi Washington, an alum of Spelman’s curatorial studies program.
After three decades away from New Orleans, Smith returned and spent two years as the director of the Xavier University of Louisiana Art Gallery. The exhibitions she curated focused on Xavier’s history as well as broader New Orleans history.
Smith worked in tandem with Daniele Gair, Xavier’s collections manager and registrar. Together, they worked on the art gallery’s exhibitions and managed the art displayed around the campus.
“She’s a consummate curator,” Gair said. “She sees things through the lens of art, and she sees art as a way to kind of approach societal structures.”
A new mandate
Throughout her career, Smith’s curatorial focus has been on art within the African diaspora. At NOMA, she has widened her scope to a more global subject matter. Her new mandate is to ensure NOMA’s work resonates for as many audiences as possible.
But Smith is still leading with a focus on Black women’s art. She refers to the work of artist and art historian Freida High Tesfagiorgis, who coined the term “Afrofemcentrism,” establishing a theoretical framework for Black women’s art in the 1980s.
“Of course, I’m bringing that intersectionality into my work, but I’m also knowing that we exist in a larger community,” Smith said. “And so I believe in that exchange and community.”
Kéla Jackson, a Spelman alum who studied under Smith, said Smith’s expertise on art within the African diaspora makes her suited for the curatorial role at NOMA because she can offer a fuller picture, so to speak.
“What does that mean for us to think from what is often pushed to the margin or pushed at the edge?” Jackson said. “She’s found that to be a very vast space to work in and to work within and to work through, and that’s what she’s going to bring to that very public space.”
Jackson challenges the idea that Black art can’t be considered mainstream the way European art is. She says that it’s important to emphasize Black art in mainstream spaces like NOMA.
“Art for everyone does not have to be a Rembrandt, it could be a Mickalene Thomas piece,” Jackson said.
NOMA’s hiring of Smith comes as the museum has worked to reform its image and practices in recent years. In 2020, a group of former employees published an open letter accusing the institution and its leadership of anti-Black racism internally and externally, as well as anti-LGBTQ bias.
Weeks after the letter was published, NOMA announced its “Agenda For Change,” which instituted organizational changes, DEI efforts and a commitment to developing collections “through the lens of racial equity and social justice.”
Smith says the controversy didn’t influence her decision to join NOMA.
“It just encouraged me to up my game,” she said. “It was a challenge.”
Keeping New Orleans centered
As chief curator, Smith oversees the curation of tens of thousands of works of art at NOMA – many from around the world. But she also feels a responsibility to keep New Orleans centered.
“It’s really [about] uplifting New Orleans as this cosmopolitan city, and one that doesn’t necessarily have to import culture … it’s about bringing to fruition conversations or compelling stories in which New Orleans is at the center of it,” she said.
Ron Bechet, a professor of art at Xavier, worked closely with Smith during her time at Xavier. Bechet hopes she can bring visual arts to the forefront of New Orleans culture and highlight the spiritual side of cultural traditions, specifically those related to Mardi Gras.
Bechet says that Smith has a unique perspective as a New Orleans native who trained away from the city.
“The thing I like about what she does is that she listens,” he said. “She’s able to actually not only feel but also listen to what’s going on with artists and what’s going on in the community, and how an artist relates and comes from and is of the community.”
Through her work, Smith wants to encourage New Orleanians to “stretch” themselves to be a part of a larger, global conversation, she says. She hopes that an upcoming exhibition at NOMA will facilitate that.
“New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations,” which opens Friday (April 4), showcases West African masking traditions. It calls back to New Orleans’ own masking traditions, such as the Mardi Gras Indians.
“This work is same and it’s different, and it’s about holding space for both of those to happen. To have an appreciation of an origin culture of ours, and to foster that dialogue,” she said.
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