Dr. Karen E. Milbourne has been a curator at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC since May 2008 and Senior Curator since October 2019. Currently, she also serves on the museum’s senior management as Acting Head of Knowledge Production. Previously, she was Associate Curator of African Art and Department Head for the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific Islands at The Baltimore Museum of Art, and prior to that, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. On January 29, 2024, she will begin her new position as the J. Sanford Miller Director of the Fralin Art Museum at the University of Virginia as it builds a new Center for the Arts. Her current exhibitions are Georges Adéagbo: Create to Free Yourselves, John Akomfrah: Five Murmurations, and From the Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya with Ayana V. Jackson.