Dr. Christine Mullen Kreamer, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the National Museum of African Art, has been chosen to receive the 2018 Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar Award in the Humanities. The award, first given in 2000, celebrates excellence in all branches of Smithsonian scholarship by honoring the sustained achievement of two outstanding Smithsonian scholars each year—one in the sciences and one in the humanities. The winners are asked to deliver a lecture on some aspect of their work to the Smithsonian community and such members of the general public who wish to attend, and receive a medal and a contribution to their research funds.



One need only run a quick search through SIRIS (the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System) to see the extent of Dr. Kreamer’s scholarship. She was engaged in award winning work before completion of her dissertation, which focused on the sacred contexts of Moba arts of northern Togo. Her subsequent Moba-focused papers and publications reach from discussions of ritual in relation to the arts, to minimalism in African art, and the ethical impacts of increasing the value of objects as a result of one’s research. Two of her publications, realized since she joined the staff of the NMAfA fulltime, have been recognized with the Smithsonian Secretary’s research award for extraordinary scholarship: Inscribing Meaning (which received a Smithsonian Secretary’s research award in 2008 and honorable mention for the Arts Council of the African Studies Association) and African Cosmos, (which was recognized in 2013.) In the first, Chris partnered with leading scholars of the arts to examine the interplay between visual arts and the written word in relation to the sacred, the body, and performance. In the second, she moves from the astronomical observations of ancient Egyptians and Nubians through cosmically inspired arts of Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria, and to the aspirational works of Willem Boshoff, Karel Nel and other leading contemporary artists. Currently, she is developing a project tentatively entitled the “Creativity of Work” that examines the intersections between career and functionality with art forms and aesthetics. In addition, she hopes to return to her life-long love of minimalist art with an exhibition focused on its African iterations. Chris has served as Acting Director at NMAfA and remained in the demanding position of Deputy Director and Chief Curator through the transition to a new director, but this has not stopped her scholarly outreach. She has just recently completed for publication an article on connoisseurship in relation to the Smithsonian’s Ivory initiative—an outgrowth of her involvement on the pan-SI Ivory advisory group and her influential and ongoing scholarship on and advocacy for the essential and under-emphasized skills of connoisseurship in current visual arts practice.



Chris will present her lecture, “The Creativity of Work: Knowledge, Power, and Aesthetic Experience in the Arts of Africa,” Wednesday, December 19, at 11:00 a.m. in the National Museum of the American Indian’s Rasmuson Theater. For those who cannot attend the lecture in person, it will be webcast at https://www.si.edu/live.



Great thanks to the committee who assisted with the selection of this year’s recipient: Kenneth Slowik, Chair, (American History); Louise Cort (Freer/Sackler); Tom Crouch (Air and Space); Bert Drake (Environmental Research Center); David DeVorkin, (Air and Space); Giovanni Fazio (Astrophysical Observatory); Adrienne Kaeppler (Natural History); Nancy Knowlton (Natural History); Ellen Miles (National Portrait Gallery); Douglas Owsley (Natural History); and David Wildt (NZP Center for Species Survival). Congratulations to Chris for receiving this well-deserved Smithsonian honor.