The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) has named Michelle Commander as its new deputy director. She succeeds Kinshasha Holman Conwill, who retired in December 2022, after serving almost twenty years of service.
In her new position, Commander will oversee the museum’s Living History campaign as well as expand its technological reach with the vision of reaching “every corner of the digital world.” Additionally, she will give leadership to the museum’s activities and the offices of Education and Publications.
Kevin Young, Andrew W. Mellon Director of the museum lauded Commander for her impeccable track record as a leader and her credentials as an academic.
“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 press release. "She has a demonstrated record of embracing innovation to expand a museum’s reach to various communities.”
Before coming to the NMAAHC, Commander served as Deputy Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She also was the Schomburg Center’s Associate Director and Curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, according to her biography.
She earned a B.A. in English from Charleston Southern University, an M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction from Florida State University; and an M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California.
A scholar of slavery and memory, Commander is the author of several academic articles and books including Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic and Avidly Reads: Passages . She is also the editor of the anthology Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition .
As a professor, she taught in the Department of English and Program in Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee for eight years. She also taught at Florida A&M University, Florida State University and the University of Ghana.
Currently, Commander is at work on Seizing Black Space, a book-length project examining Black mobility and geography after slavery.
