Curriculum vitae of Desiree Dibasen !Nanuses — a decade of curatorial, academic and research practice.
I am a practicing curator, an academic, and a researcher. My practice philosophy is: "As they circulate through our lives, we look through objects (to see what they disclose about history, society, nature or culture – above all, what they disclose about us), but we only catch a glimpse of things." Bill Brown, Thing Theory, 2001.
| Employer | Post held | From | To | Reason for Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Yale University Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage | Directors Forum Fellow | 01/10/2023 | 30/06/2025 | GRADUATED FROM THE YALE DIRECTOR'S FORUM WHICH WAS OFFERED BY THE YALE INSTITUTE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE ON 12 JUNE 2025 AF |
| 2. Delvendahl Martin Architects - ReThinking Bismarck Monument, Hamburg Germany | Consultant (Decolonial Specialist) | 06/03/ 2023 | 30/09/2023 | PROJECT SELECTED AS FINALIST, EXHIBITED WITH THE EIGHT FINALISTS AT MUSEUM HAMBURGISCHES GESCHICHTE In GERMANY |
| 3. Open Restitution Africa (ORA) - An affiliate of Digital Heritage Africa) | Case Study Researcher on Namibia's Confronting Colonial Pasts Envisioning Creative Futures Project (23 Namibian objects returned to Namibia from Germany) | 15/08/2023 | 30/11/ 2023 | COMPLETED THREE MONTHS RESEARCH ON THE RETURN OF 23 OBJECTS FROM GERMANY TO NAMI |
| 4. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Interdisciplinary Chester Dale Fellow 2021/22 | 01/09/2021 | 31/08/2022 | I investigated institutional practices on equity, diversity and inclusive decolonial practices and their impact on programming informed by human resources. |
| 5. National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) | Acting Chief Curator & Collections Curator | 03/02/2020 | 31/12/2021 | RESIGNED TO TAKE UP FELLOWSHIP IN NEW YORK |
| 6. National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) | Curation Department Coordinator & Exhibitions Curator | 14/01/ 2013 | 15/01/ 2016 | RESIGNED TO PURSUE MASTER OF ARTS DEGREE AT KINGSTON UNIVERSITY LONDON |
| 7. National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) | GRN Collections Curator | 15/01/2012 | 14/01 2013 | PROMOTED TO EXHIBITIONS CURATOR & DEPT COORDINATOR |
| 8. National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) | Junior Curator | 07/09/2011 | 14/01/ 2012 | PROMOTED TO GRN COLLECTIONS CURATOR |
GRADE OBTAINED: A- (DISTINCTION)
GRADE OBTAINED: B- (Supplement the BA Degree from University of Namibia)
GRADE OBTAINED: Completed 3rd year modules (Supplemented by Museum & Gallery Studies Study Abroad)
Telling and Preserving Heritage Stories in the Digital Realm Offered Online by International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM)
3 Day Course facilitated and moderated by Win-Win Group Namibia
Short Course facilitated by Nampower Development Centre
International Council of Museums, Arusha, Tanzania, Africa
GRADES OBTAINED: Eng 1 st Lang (2), Afri 1 st Lang (B), German (C), Bio (C), Ph Sci (D), Math (E)
My portfolio is comprehensive with all my current lectures, websites and past research, writings, and projects with relevant videos.
My most recent virtual conversation was as a panelist at the 2025 Association of Critical Heritage Studies Early Career Researchers Network Symposium held from 4-6 December 2025 under the theme: Contested Heritage as a Shared Responsibility.
I presented at the Annual Museums Association of Namibia AGM in Otjiwarongo a paper titled The Politics of Documentation and Research tailored to the Museum of Namibian Fashion, October 2024
I was a panelist on the Lives of objects virtual gathering hosted by Goethe Institut London on repatriation, rematriation, reparations and the legacies of colonialism discourse, November 2023.
Lectures I gave included a paper on the autoethnography within my research, a book I titled I Had To Get Mad..! at the University of Tanzania on Friday, 29 September 2023. This was a lecture hosted by St. Augustine University of Tanzania on Contemporary Issues within the Arts (creative industries) in collaboration with Africa Arts Association, September 2023.
I also presented a workshop lecture at Wits University, South Africa titled, Obliterate hosted by Witwatersrand University at their Origins Centre from 7-8 September 2023.
I was a Chester Dale Fellow at The MET during 2021/22 and was a panelist on Contemporary Dialogues in the Arts from Africa hosted by The Metropolitan Museum of Art during Research Out Loud under the auspices of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (May 2022 - not public)
I was a mentor for the African Female Artist Mentorship Program (AFAMP) cohort 2022/2023 for emerging female artists managed by Girl Child Art Foundation, 2022/23
When the global pandemic introduced a new normal in 2020, we introduced a the #WhatsYourStory project which was a million dollar project that documented 82 Namibian artists creative practices from concept to final product in the exhibition and as Public Art. Kindly see the catalogue #WhatsYourStory Exhibition Catalogue, 2021
The International Conference on African Cultures representing Namibia, I presented a paper titled Interrogating Curatorship of Human Remains and Religious Objects at the 2021 Africa Speaks Conference (November 2021)
Contemporary Art Of Africa In The Era Of The Pandemic | An online conference hosted by the Museum of African Art (May, 2021)
Hosted by Yale Art Gallery, a conversation on Restitution, Repatriation, and the Global Pandemic from an African point of view. Moderated by James Green, the Frances and Benjamin Benenson Foundation Assistant Curator of African Art at Yale Art Gallery (October 2020)
Hosted by National Gallery Zimbabwe online conversation titled, Cultural Work in Tumultuous Times (May, 2020)
The exhibition, Re-Considering Canon from 15 - 23 September 2018 is the result of a year-long research project by MA Curating Contemporary Design in collaboration with the Design Museum at Kingston School of Art, 2017/18.
Yale Directors Forum Fellowship (Feb 2024- June 2025)
The Yale Directors Forum is a highly selective 18-month fellowship program for global leaders in the culture and heritage sector. Fellows are trailblazers and change agents who are building museums, cultural centers, libraries, archives and organizations that play an important role in stewarding cultural heritage for present and future generations. The Yale Directors Forum is focused on supporting visionary leaders to achieve growth and improvements within their organizations through participant-centered learning, coaching and advisory services, and the development of a diverse professional network.
Fellows convened for two in-person sessions over the course of the 18-month program. Each in-person session included a series of seminars with leading global practitioners, site visits, and peer learning. Seminar topics included: building cultural institutions; preserving cultural infrastructure in Africa; creating a fundraising strategy; strengthening board leadership and governance; and succession and sustainability in cultural institutions.
In addition, fellows engaged in a series of structured sessions with an executive coach and collaborated with Yale IPCH staff to embark on the planning of their first collections care program or an updated program within their institution designed to preserve art, historical, and cultural material heritage. The program culminated in a non-degree certificate from Yale University.
I was employed as a Case Study Researcher focusing on Namibia's Confronting Colonial Pasts Envisioning Creative Futures Project (CCPECF).
Open Restitution Africa is gathering data on current restitution processes across the African continent and building a custom open data platform to house this information. It will exist as a digital portal that makes visible African perspectives and experiences of restitution.
In the first phase of the project, we conducted desktop research on all available online data on restitution journeys. This informed the metadata frameworks created, which plotted a timeline with the journey of a restitution request from when it was initiated to its current status ('returned', 'in the process of return', 'unacknowledged request').
The second - and current - phase of the project is collecting case studies on individual restitution journeys. The goal is to use the events from these journeys to map the different processes of restitution from an African perspective. The intent is to highlight gaps in our knowledge-base and further invite knowledge-production around restitution processes.
We are a finalist!!! Currently exhibited at Museum Hamburgisches Geschichte!!! I served as Consultant for Delvendahl Martin Architects as Decolonial Specialist for Re-Thinking Bismarck Monument competition in Germany. When we think about monuments – we tell stories independently of the actual presence of the monuments we refer to. We store images in our memory. The project discussed physical and conceptual strategies to decolonize the canonical monument by making a process of writing history visible, placing postcolonial scholarship into dialogue with emerging forms of community discourse and artistic responses. We understood this process as opportunity to reconcile the complex and uncomfortable history of colonialism, in particular the history between Namibia and Germany and the German Namibian Genocide by establishing an intensive, open and caring dialogue.
Girl Child Art Foundation created the African Female Artist Mentorship Program (AFAMP) in response to the need to empower and support young African female artists to succeed in the creative industry for additional support beyond GCAF's successful art workshops, exhibitions, and other art-based educational programs.
The African Female Artist Mentorship Program (AFAMP) supports individual artistic methods and professional ambitions of emerging female artists in Africa by providing access to the skills and experience of selected mentors. AFAMP is a specialized art program developed specifically for female artists who are clear about what they would like to learn or those seeking a one-on-one lesson style. The program provides skills development for female African artists on the African continent with the potential to practice art full-time and build a successful artistic career.
As a mentor, I curated the online exhibition and provided educational and developmental advice and guidance to identify the mentee's personal and professional goals, as well as develop a plan for achieving goals including but not limited to:
I served as Interdisciplinary Chester Dale Fellow (2021/22) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where I investigated institutional practices on equity, diversity and inclusive decolonial practices and their impact on programming informed by human resources. My curatorial, academic and research practice re-defines the art canon as it was based on Western academia and its colonial frame of reference through my action research and advocates for African art, artists, literature, academia, pedagogy, and acknowledgment of indigenous knowledge systems.
Within the Directors' Office, I had a discussion with the Chief Executive Officer, Max Hollein, and the Chief Diversity Officer, Mrs. Lavita McMath Turner. Mr. Hollein expounded on the operations largely donor-funded, its restrictions, and expectations for making amendments and changes. He also greatly spoke of the decentralization of the Met, the inclusive practice towards scholarship, and the representation of plural views.
I explored the earlier and current strategic plan (2022-2027), and the collections policy in absence of an exhibitions policy, and had a conversation with the Deputy Director of Collections & Administration, Andrea Bayer. During a conversation with Denise Murrell, Ph.D., Merryl H. & James S. Tisch Curator, Office of the Director, we discussed the 13 Commitments to Anti-Racism, Diversity, and a Stronger Community dated July 6, 2020. For a deeper understanding of the operational frameworks including values and recruitment strategies, I spoke with Jeanette Brizel, the Chief Human Resource Officer.
The critical lens I applied to the exhibitions employing decolonizing curatorial practice included highlighting previously excluded from the canon art and artists which was most successfully visible through the Costume Institutes' In America: A Lexicon & An Anthology of Fashion. The choice of period rooms with the introduction of artists who have not been afforded similar platforms employed not only laboratory exploration but also challenged the curatorial canon with the cinematic directors employed for the rooms. They were able to provide a platform for fashion designers and costumes by employing best practices leaving the Western white cube aesthetic and creating an alternative aesthetic and curatorial approach.
Similarly, the Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast exhibit by the European Sculpture & Decorative Arts department also created an alternative virtual exhibition space and curatorial approach which included contemporary artists' commentary in their own voices narrating their interpretations of Carpeaux Recast. According to the curator Elyse Nelson, it attracted positive feedback and drew (local) communities who had not visited the museum before. The exhibitions' curatorial narratives are of interest locally and nationally and present these works in their rich diversity, inclusive of multiple narratives, authentic, acknowledging the indigenous knowledge systems and cultural values which raise the profile of the art and associated objects.
Both these two exhibitions decolonized canonical art by placing postcolonial scholarship into dialogue with newly emerging forms of scholarship that critically engage contemporary decolonial curatorial approaches and practices. I found that each Curator has worked from a place of conviction, fair ethical practice, and a burning desire to challenge the status quo. They did not propose and curate the above exhibitions guided by an institutional policy, tool, or framework.
Lastly, The African Origin of Civilization exhibition was a display based solely on western scholarship and colonial thought and practice. Within the curatorial, assembling, clustering, isolating, and relocating objects are ways of exploring meaning-making. The exhibition aimed, 'through twenty-one pairings of works from different African cultures and eras, provides a rare opportunity to appreciate the extraordinary creativity of the continent across five millennia, revealing unexpected parallels and contrasts.' I question whether it has not highlighted more of the differences, thereby achieving a hierarchy of Egypt once again perpetuating the same narrative.
The aim of any exhibition with African art is building and establishing the African art canon while at the same time creating an industry where African artists thrive. As a utopian envisage of what The African Origin of Civilization exhibition would look like from an African perspective, I drafted a proposal for the exhibition to tour in all its representative African States for my doctoral dissertation. It includes a spatial exhibition plan and design, an accompanying public program for workshops (skill building and sharing), symposia and related events for information dissemination and acquisition, and a list of co-collaborators. These include a collaborative partnership with local host exhibition spaces and tertiary institutions.
The collaboration provides a platform where you invite Africans (curators, writers, practitioners, and communities from where the object emerged) to draw on their own history and knowledge to add value to the provenance research of the objects. It is an opportunity to re-establish links, make new connections and dialogues for future engagement, and education, and collaboratively serve the public and audiences with publications and public programming from the newly acquired knowledge and information.
Re-defining the art canon as it was based on Western academia and its colonial frame of reference through my current action research advocates for African art, artists, its literature, academia, pedagogy, and acknowledgment of indigenous knowledge systems in Africa and throughout the rest of the world. To this end, I explored individual artists 'self-decolonial' creative practices which include the solo exhibition in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Tisch Galleries self - titled, Winslow Holmer's Cross Currents, and investigating artists such as the Gees Bends in the Textiles Department. The New Museum in New York brought together over fifty years of work self-titled Faith Ringgold: American People which provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of the artist's impactful vision and these narrative textiles are symbiotic to my heritage textiles of patchwork from the Nama Khoisan communities of Namibia embedded with symbolic meaning and used as political resistance communicative tool to raise the profile and value of the object. I utilize this theme of patchwork and narrative quilting as a conceptual tool to weave indigenous knowledge into the existing objects and artworks.
During my tenure as the Acting Chief Curator & Collections Curator I was a member of NAGN's senior management team, actively participating in shaping the organization's vision and mission, while directing its artistic program. I led the efforts to build, present, care for, and conserve the NAGN's collections, and was responsible for the support and content of the exhibitions and related efforts. I functioned as the lead spokesperson for the art in NAGN's collection and the exhibitions. I actively pursued and cultivated relationships with donors, collectors, and the broader art world, building support for NAGN's artistic program through gifts, purchases, and exhibition efforts. As a community ambassador for NAGN, I developed civic, cultural, philanthropic, and governmental relationships, advancing the NAGN's mission in tandem with the strategic success of its operations and I drafted the current operational plan for the current NAGN strategic plan.
I rewrote and reprogrammed the NAGN's Curatorial Practice which I executed in tandem with the senior accountant as follows: The National Art Gallery of Namibia's (NAGN) curatorial practice as a contemporary cultural currency and as a social and political agency is viewed to write and rewrite histories, a way to read the present and imagine possible futures. Utilizing curating as a method to address the meaning of things, and thus, our readings thereof as well as curating as a tool to occupy physical and virtual spaces and to interact with works of art. Therefore, by employing the practice moving forward, the NAGN will view curating as a model to be, to live, and to think with and through art and artists, in proximity to them and what they make, from their studios to the exhibition formats of their choice experienced through varied practices.
I functioned as Project Manager for all Exhibitions & Editing Contributor for accompanying publications at National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN). The amended program as a response to the Covid 19 global pandemic included a complete online migration through a project titled #WhatsYourStory, which positioned 82 Namibian visual artists on a digital platform documenting their creative practice from concept to final work in the gallery.
1. #WhatsYourStory Project 2020/21: An Exhibition, A Mapping of Namibian Visual Artists in Global discourse, and an Introduction to Public Art in Namibia.
#WhatsYourStory was a three-part project: i) An art exhibition that is the artists' response to the effects of Covid-19. ii) Launch of each participating artists makers process YouTube video; and iii) An introduction to Public Art.
The premise of this exhibition was to identify three key messages which the first one is an exhibition that the artists have contributed greatly toward through their techniques which we hope the tertiary institutions will employ to decolonize the existing curricula and start teaching Namibian ways of creating passing down this knowledge generationally.
An online exhibition including documentation of artists' processes which has been streamed on all our social media and which you can access through the NAGN YouTube channel, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the NAGN website which positioned our Namibian visual artists in a global discourse engaging with visual artists worldwide and enabling us as curators to write about them and have access to them and their work on the world wide web through this positioning on all virtual platforms.
Thirdly, this exhibition was an introduction to public art in Namibia. These videos are available on the NAGN YouTube page and its social media pages. Links are available on my website as research that contributes towards my doctorate.
2. Bank Windhoek Triennial 2020
The Bank Windhoek Triennial 2020 is a celebration and award for visual art in Namibia that provides a platform for developing and promoting the Namibian visual art industry. Staged every three years, this highly competitive art exhibition is open to all artists with Namibian citizenship, domicile, or permanent residence.
This Triennial consisted of an all-Namibian panel. Significant changes the judges made under my guidance were the introduction of a new category, Textile Art as this is an authentic Namibian identity that needed to be addressed as an alone standing entity due to the large numbers of submissions attesting to the contemporary practice of textile art in Namibia.
Another important decolonial practice was the renaming of the Craft category to Customary Contemporary Art. Addressing colonial classification systems African states inherited and took ownership and became the purveyors and stewards of the value and contribution of these contemporary practices raising value not only of the objects but its relationship to the intangible heritage and indigenous knowledge systems.
3. Landscapes 2020
This collection consists of artworks in paintings, photographs, and sculptures from the National Art Gallery of Namibia Permanent Collection, Government of the Republic of Namibia Permanent Collection in collaboration with contemporary artists who contributed to the theme of Landscape via varied interpretations.
The exhibition aimed to explore the current characteristic of landscape art in Namibia, land as home, land as activism, and land as a witness. Landscapes 2020 traced its innovation throughout history by highlighting the aesthetic quality, and expressive power of the individual works that depict various landscapes as subjects and seek to open the viewer's mind to a vantage point of the past in comparison to the present. Landscapes present a fundamental opportunity in order to unsettle existing interpretations and meanings about finding ways how decolonial narratives may be implemented in non-western art scholarship.
The South African photographer Santu Mofokeng proposes that landscape is not separated from the self: 'Landscape is not geography, certainly not in the romantic sense. It is about your view, where you live, where you die, that is your landscape.' For Mofokeng, the landscape is seen, experienced, and embodied. The landscape, however, is not empty and has never been empty. In places like Swakopmund and !Nami#nus the land and unmarked graves remain a silent witness to the colonial legacy. The colonizer's imprint can still be seen in various forms such as architecture, monuments, museum exhibits, and artifacts, renaming street names and fences that mark off vast tracts of commercial and private farmland.
African institutions I engaged virtually through many platforms, workshops, symposia and, in person as can be seen on all the videos on my website as well which the pandemic adversely played very well in the favor of the research.
I worked at the National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) in various capacities since 2011- started as Junior Curator responsible for Education and then I was the Collections Curator, thereafter I requested to be the Exhibitions Curator when we had enough staff, a colleague and I swapped job descriptions and whilst the Exhibitions Curator, I became head of the curatorial department as curation department coordinator. I left NAGN in 2016 to complete an MA in Curating during 2017 – 2018 and upon returning I was appointed as the Acting Chief Curator and Collections Curator for NAGN.
In January 2013 I became the Exhibitions Curator and served the last year with NAGN as Curatorial Coordinator / Senior Curator. In these years I proposed the annual group shows addressing contemporary issues and two exhibitions traveled internationally under my curatorship. The first exhibition, Land Matters in Art addressed the challenging land issue in Namibia which relates to economic inequalities and historical grievances traveled to Germany due to its close colonial ties with Namibia. The United to End Gender-Based Violence exhibition traveled to the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva and from there to Kansas University in Kansas, USA, and then returned home to Namibia.
All three exhibitions were cataloged and have a strong digital and social media presence. The Unite To End Gender-Based Violence exhibition was in collaboration with the United Nations, LaRRI, and the Ministry of Health, and our opening speaker was Lady Pohamba, the first lady of Namibia at that time. This exhibition made front page news of the most popular newspaper, The Namibian, and was on the news segments of both television broadcasters we have in Namibia, namely the Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) as well as One Africa Television (1 Africa TV). The Land Matters in Art exhibition was in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands, the Goethe Institute fur Zusammenarbeit (GiZ), and exhibiting partners like the FNCC, Goethe Institute, and education partners included the University of Namibia (UNAM) and the College of the Arts.
The exhibition preparations for me entailed convincing my director and fellow Curator and persuading each potential partner to join hands with the NAGN in various capacities. I excelled extremely well at this part of my job because I am passionate about what I do and no matter how tough and uncomfortable a situation, I handle it with a smile, tact, and dignity.
All three of these exhibitions were hosted in more than three venues, depending on the magnitude and number of works selected from the submissions. They were hosted at the NAGN, the Goethe Institute, the College of the Art Galleries, the University of Namibia Art Galleries, and the Franco Cultural Centre Gallery. All submissions were received at the NAGN and dispatched as loans to the other exhibition venues and all loan agreements were compiled by me and each institution was required to take out insurance for the artworks within their galleries for the duration of the exhibition period.
I functioned as the only curator with two gallery technicians and one framing technician within the Curatorial Department. My day-to-day tasks involved collection accessioning, writing, and filing condition reports, maintaining the acquisitions register, making recommendations to the NAGN board for acquisitions to grow the collection, and traveling bi-monthly to a region in Namibia with our Mobile Exhibitions System (MES) program.
I was employed in the Curatorial Department of the National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) in 2011 as a Junior Curator with duties for decentralization of the NAGN to all 13 regions as a satellite NAGN program and within three months, I was promoted to GRN Curator which I took up office in January 2012 led the Education and the decentralization program of the NAGN. At that time the NAGN had +-200 artworks in its collection and by the time I left the NAGN we had just over 1800 artworks in the NAGN Permanent Collection.
For the Mobile Exhibitions System (MES) program, my tasks included all logistics and administration from conceptualizing the program, budgeting for accommodation, transport, packaging, courier services, printing of reproductions and promotional material, refreshments, contingencies and remaining within set budget allocation, selecting the works of reproductions, acquiring copyright and limited copyright for marketing/promotional material from artists (if deceased, from the custodians/beneficiaries), sourcing suitable venues for display of exhibition and public program, developing an exhibition design / adjusting the exhibition design and getting it approved from both directors, handling all internal and external communications, packing crates of works and all requirements in the NAGN truck and keeping record of all the paperwork and documents, formulating a public program, setup and de-installation of exhibit with assistance from technician and thereafter monitoring and evaluating the exhibition and submitting a full report at the end of each month for all in house curatorial tasks and the Mobile Exhibition System.
My day-to-day tasks involved collection accessioning, writing, and filing condition reports, maintaining the acquisitions register, making recommendations to the NAGN board for acquisitions to grow the collection, scheduling the temporary and permanent exhibitions including exhibition curating and traveling bi-monthly to a region in Namibia with our Mobile Exhibitions System (MES) program.
The MES tasks included all logistics and administration from conceptualizing the program, budgeting for accommodation, transport, packaging, and courier services, the printing of reproductions and promotional material, selecting the works, acquiring copyright and limited copyright, sourcing venues for the display of exhibition and public program, developing an exhibition, all internal and external communications and keeping a record of all the paperwork and documents, formulating a public program, and submitting a full report at the end of each month for all in house curatorial tasks and the MES program.
Prior to my employment with NAGN, I worked in highly creative industries as a marketer for a popular media house Namibian Sun and before that, I was employed in the film industry by Media Logistics. I am a reality television show winner, Just Fabulous from One Africa TV and I have worked as an On-Air Presenter throughout my years at university at UNAM Radio and Kudu FM.
Yale Directors Forum Fellowship (Feb 2024- June 2025)
The Yale Directors Forum is a highly selective 18-month fellowship program for global leaders in the culture and heritage sector. Fellows are trailblazers and change agents who are building museums, cultural centers, libraries, archives and organizations that play an important role in stewarding cultural heritage for present and future generations. The Yale Directors Forum is focused on supporting visionary leaders to achieve growth and improvements within their organizations through participant-centered learning, coaching and advisory services, and the development of a diverse professional network.
Fellows convened for two in-person sessions over the course of the 18-month program. Each in-person session included a series of seminars with leading global practitioners, site visits, and peer learning. Seminar topics included: building cultural institutions; preserving cultural infrastructure in Africa; creating a fundraising strategy; strengthening board leadership and governance; and succession and sustainability in cultural institutions.
In addition, fellows engaged in a series of structured sessions with an executive coach and collaborated with Yale IPCH staff to embark on the planning of their first collections care program or an updated program within their institution designed to preserve art, historical, and cultural material heritage. The program culminated in a non-degree certificate from Yale University.
We are a finalist!!! Currently exhibited at Museum Hamburgisches Geschichte!!! I served as Consultant for Delvendahl Martin Architects as Decolonial Specialist for Re-Thinking Bismarck Monument competition in Germany. When we think about monuments – we tell stories independently of the actual presence of the monuments we refer to. We store images in our memory. The project discussed physical and conceptual strategies to decolonize the canonical monument by making a process of writing history visible, placing postcolonial scholarship into dialogue with emerging forms of community discourse and artistic responses. We understood this process as opportunity to reconcile the complex and uncomfortable history of colonialism, in particular the history between Namibia and Germany and the German Namibian Genocide by establishing an intensive, open and caring dialogue.
Previously I served as Interdisciplinary Chester Dale Fellow (2021/22) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where I investigated institutional practices on equity, diversity and inclusive decolonial practices and their impact on programming informed by human resources. My curatorial, academic and research practice re-defines the art canon as it was based on Western academia and its colonial frame of reference through my action research and advocates for African art, artists, literature, academia, pedagogy, and acknowledgment of indigenous knowledge systems.
Nominated by the US Embassy to the U.S. Department of State to participate in their Interregional Project entitled "Promoting Social Change through the Arts", administered by FHI 360.
I served as a Class Representative for the MA Curating Contemporary Design at Kingston University London participating at the Board of Study Consultative Meetings at the School of Critical Studies and Creative Industries. I am an effective communicator and can communicate with different people from all walks of life. In my class I was the only student from the African continent, and I had the ability to represent my not-so-diverse class at numerous symposia, meetings and to the head of the School for Creative Industries.
In 2016 I was elected as an International Council of Museums (ICOM) International Committee for Museums of Ethnography (ICME) Fellow. During my tenure as a Fellow I had the privilege of working alongside historians and curators that are immensely passionate about acquiring knowledge and creating knowledge thereby increasing the knowledge hub. Whether it was by choice or not, the inquisitive inquirer's mind rubbed off. The fellowship required that I research a topic and present my findings at the ICOM Triennial which took place in Milan, Italy, and my paper was listed amongst the conference opening day on 3 July 2016. This fellowship also enabled my participation in a study abroad program which I completed in Museum & Gallery Studies during the summer of 2016.