Equal parts organizer, curator, and digital media sensation, Kimberly Drew, otherwise known to her Internet fans as @museummammy, dubs herself a “#carefulblackgirl selling the shadow and supporting the substance.” The Instagram bio reads like a reminder—and in the case of an agent whose project involves “presenting multitudes,” the distinction matters.
Drew stands as one of black contemporary art’s most visible champions. With north of 100,000 followers subscribed to her Instagram handle alone–joined by thousands more across Twitter and Facebook—Drew’s presence is fortified by the type of institutional sheen that comes with running the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s social media channels.
Her rise in the art world started in 2011, on the heels of a summer-long internship with the Studio Museum’s Thelma Golden the year prior. That March, Drew launched a visual repository “for art by and about people of African descent” called Black Contemporary Art.
In July, Drew joined art historian Jessica Bell Brown, and writers Jessica Lynne and Taylor Renee Aldridge, in organizing the Black Art Incubator, a project that invited members of the public in a two-month long program of book exchanges, art critiques, panel discussions, and worshops in SoHo’s Recess exhibition space. The Village Voice described the venture as akin to a “secret clubhouse, convivial with an insider edge.”
We recently caught up with Drew to talk about what she’s been up to, her work at the Metropolitan Museum, and where she sees the art world going in 10 years’ time. See what she had to say below.
Read the full interview on artnet News.