Smithsonian American Art Museum Appoints Dalila Scruggs Inaugural Curator of African American Art

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, DC, has named Dalila Scruggs Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art,Artnewsreports. She is the first person to occupy the newly created role. Named for sculptor Augusta Savage, who is associated with the Harlem Renaissance and is additionally known as a teacher and an advocate for equal rights for African American artists, the position was funded with $5 million from anonymous donors.

“I am delighted to welcome Dalila Scruggs to SAAM as the inaugural Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art,” said museum director Stephanie Stebich in a statement. “SAAM is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world, and I am so pleased that Dr. Scruggs will bring fresh, thoughtful analysis to these works that evoke themes both universal and specific to the African American and the American experience.”

Scruggs brings with her a wealth of experience in mediums including nineteenth- and twentieth-century painting, prints, sculpture, and photography. Since 2021, she has served as curator for photography and prints at New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She arrived to that institution from the Brooklyn Museum, where she was a guest curator in 2020. Scruggs earlier worked at the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, as a consulting curator; at the Brooklyn Museum as an assistant curator of American art; and at Williamstown, Massachusetts’s Williams College Museum of Art as a curatorial fellow. She holds a doctorate in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University.

In her new role, Scruggs will work on the museum’s exhibition program and will be instrumental in acquisitions connected to African American art. As well, she will participate in SAAM’s cross-departmental initiative “American Voices and Visions,” aimed at reinstalling the institution’s collection. She takes up her post on April 22.