Harvard’s Dalila Scruggs is now the first Augusta Savage Curator of African American art for the Smithsonian

Dalila Scruggs has joined the curatorial team of the Smithsonian American Art Museum as the first Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art. Her position is named after Augusta Savage, an artist, teacher and community art program director in Harlem in the 1930s.

As part of her new position, Scruggs will contribute to the museum’s exhibition program and collecting priorities as they relate broadly to African American art, the museum said.

She is also going to be involved in a big cross-departmental project called “American Voices and Visions,” which is aimed at completely reinstalling the museum’s collection. Scruggs is an expert in a variety of 19th- and 20th-century mediums, such as painting, prints, sculpture, and photography.

Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, stated, “I am delighted to welcome Dalila Scruggs to SAAM as the inaugural Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art. 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 had served as the photography and print curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture before joining the museum. In addition, she has worked as a guest curator at the Brooklyn Museum since 2020. She was previously a curatorial fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art, an assistant curator of American art at the Brooklyn Museum, and a consultant curator at the University of Alabama’s Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art.

Sruggs holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in art and architectural history from Harvard University. Under the esteemed fellowship program of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Scruggs was a Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow from 2007 to 2008.

She starts working at the museum on April 22.