Sharon F. Patton has been director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art since March 2003. Patton was a member of the museum’s advisory board from February 2000 until her appointment as director.

Under Patton’s leadership, the museum introduced new exhibitions and programs, such as Studio Africa, which focuses on community outreach with Washington, D.C., school systems; a visiting artist program to encourage participation between artists and students; and exhibitions designed specifically for young audiences.

An exhibition of masterpieces from the collection, “Treasures,” opened in 2004 as the centerpiece of a yearlong celebration marking the museum’s 25th anniversary as a Smithsonian museum. The current exhibition, “Treasures 2008,” highlights 74 works of ivory from the museum’s collection and special loans from private collectors throughout the United States—some of which have never been exhibited publicly. The museum’s first traveling exhibition, “Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art,” opened at the museum in May 2007 and traveled to the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles.

During Patton’s tenure, the collection has continued to grow and the museum has acquired important works of art that close the gaps in its collection. The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection was donated to the National Museum of African Art in 2005. Objects from this extraordinary collection remain on view permanently in the museum.

Since 2003, overall fundraising increased by 89 percent, visitation increased by 50 percent and Web visits increased by 15 percent. In addition, the first endowment for operations and programs—the Ralph and Shirley Shapiro Discretionary Fund—was created in 2007.

Patton, 64, was the former John G. W. Cowles Director of Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum in Ohio. She also began her tenure at Oberlin as professor of art in October 1998. Before joining the faculty at Oberlin, she was associate professor of art history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991-1998) and director of its Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (1996-1998). She served as chief curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 1988 to 1991. She was director of the Art Galleries at New Jersey’s Montclair State College from 1986 to 1987.

Patton’s research interests focused on West African and African American art and during her career, she has organized more than 20 exhibitions, including two at the Allen Memorial Art Museum—“A Matter of Taste: The African Collection at the Allen Memorial Art Museum” and “Selections from the Ralph T. Coe Collection of African Art.” Three of her exhibits—all at the Studio Museum in Harlem—received critical acclaim: “Memory and Metaphor, the Art of Romare Bearden, 1940-1987,” “Home: Contemporary Urban Images by Black Photographers” and “The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s.”

Patton is the author of two books—“Memory and Metaphor, the Art of Romare Bearden” (Oxford University Press, 1991) and “African-American Art” (Oxford University Press, 1998).

A native of Chicago, Patton received her doctorate degree in art history from Northwestern University in 1980. She earned her master’s degree at the University of Illinois, Urbana (1969) and a bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt University in Chicago (1966). Her academic career includes faculty appointments at the University of Maryland (1979-1985) and the University of Houston (1976-1979).

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