Tuliza Fleming's Page

Dr. Tuliza Fleming is a Museum Curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Smithsonian Institution. She received her B.A. from Spelman College (1994) and her M.A. and Ph.D. in American art history from the University of Maryland, College Park (1997 and 2007).

In her current capacity, Dr. Fleming is responsible for researching, curating, and scripting museum exhibitions, locating objects for the museum’s collection by working with potential donors, creating the collections plan for the museum’s visual art collection, assisting with the acquisition of objects for the popular culture collection, and contributing to the development of the Center of African American Media Arts (CAAMA). Most recently, Dr. Fleming as the co-curator and contributing essayist for the NMAAHC’s traveling exhibition and book titled, Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How The Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment.

Prior joining the NMAAHC, Dr. Fleming was the Associate Curator and head of the American Art Department at The Dayton Art Institute, located in Dayton, Ohio. During her nearly 5-year tenure at the Institute, Dr. Fleming curated seventeen in-house and traveling exhibitions including “Around the Bend: Monumental Steel Sculptures by Bret Price” (2006) “The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany” (2003), “Monet and the Age of American Impressionism” (2003), and the reinstallation of the museum’s 12,500 square foot American art wing.

For the past 15 years, Dr. Fleming has curated over 30 exhibitions and worked in and consulted for a variety of museums and cultural institutions including: the August Wilson Cultural Center, The Taft Museum of Art, The Cincinnati Museum Center, The DuSable Museum of African American History, Inc., the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the National Museum of American History, the Spelman College Art Museum, The National Gallery of Art, The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland, and the National Portrait Gallery. Her publications include the exhibition catalogues Breaking Racial Barriers: African American Portraits in the Harmon Foundation Collection and Around the Bend: Monumental Steel Sculptures by Bret Price. She has also wrote the essay, “Jeff Donadson’s Wives of Sango,” for Michael Harris’s upcoming anthology, Seeing Black and Blues: African American Artists Long in the Storm as well as “The ‘Museum Baby’ Grows Up: Being a Curator of Color in a Monochromatic Art Museum World” in Museum News (July/August, 2005: 32-37).