Rutgers-Camden Alumna Reflects on Building Diversity in the Art World

When Naomi Nelson CCAS ’81 came to Rutgers–Camden to study art history she brought an experienced understanding of museums.

She had worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the African American Museum in Philadelphia.

But she knew she needed a degree to realize her goal of making museums more culturally inclusive.

So at 28 and married with three children, she returned to school.

“In order to effect change, I had to be a person in a position of power,” she recalls. “Attending Rutgers empowered me with tools to create the change I wanted to see.  I knew I had to know European as well as African American art history.  At Rutgers, I was able to study French art and architecture at the Sorbonne University in Paris through their study abroad program.”

After graduating from Rutgers, she would re-enter the museum world as an educator and curator and set about making the institutions more open – on many levels – to diversity and underserved communities.

Her impressive resume spans more than 25 years and includes such institutions as the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she organized the Archives and the James Van Der Zee Collection (completing work initially begun by Deborah Willis); Lincoln University (art department); and, most recently, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, where she was vice president of programs.

During her time in Cincinnati, Nelson raised more than $1 million a year, including the federal Department of Education Underground Railroad Museums grant for four consecutive years; created partnerships with the University of Cincinnati, Miami University, and Northern Kentucky University; curated exhibitions such as “The Personal Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey,” “September 11: A Global Response,” and Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi’s “African American Quilts Network”; and managed a multi-million dollar budget.  She also expanded the Freedom Stations Program, a network of affiliate Underground Railroad sites across the country, to include the international struggle for human rights, adding an affiliate with Mazamitla, Mexico, where she co-sponsored two International Poverty conferences and created a technology center.

Through her work with the Freedom Stations Program, Nelson became involved with Franciscans International, a non-governmental organization with General Consultative status at the United Nations, and served as a delegate, representing the Franciscans as a consultant, at International Human Rights Conferences in Geneva, Switzerland in 2004 and 2005. 

The experience was challenging, she says, and gave her a level of professional growth she could not have imagined, but with her jazz musician husband remaining in the Philadelphia area, she found herself with a commuter marriage and less time for family obligations.

Asking herself how she could be closer to family but still make a difference in the museum (and larger) world, led her back to Philadelphia to create Curriboo Enterprises, a consulting organization that works to link museum and non-profit resources with underserved communities and foster the arts.  Nelson named the company after a plantation in South Carolina where enslaved Africans maintained their African heritage through distinctive Colonoware pottery making and African-style architecture.  

“These are things we know today about people who are no longer there.  They do not have a voice.  This is an opportunity to tell their story,” she says.

As part of her mission with Curriboo, Nelson collects 19^th-century objects such as brass candleholders and cooking pots that were used in everyday life.  She then donates these hands-on artifacts to museums, such as the Audacious Freedom exhibit at the African American Museum and Mother Bethel A.M.E. Museum, in order to give audiences the chance to connect with the people and experiences of a different time period. 

A Philadelphia native, Nelson has served on the boards of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, Preservation Pennsylvania and many cultural organizations.

She credits Rutgers with giving her the educational framework for success.  Nelson’s attachment to campus remains: her youngest son will graduate from Rutgers–Camden in 2010.  

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