Kevin Young to Direct Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Poet Kevin Young, otherwise known as the New Yorker poetry editor and director of the NYPL's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has been tapped to direct the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, succeeding director Lonnie Bunch III. "He will depart the Schomburg Center after four years on the job, but retain his position at the New Yorker," writes Sarah Cascone at Artnet. More on this:

The African American Museum, which opened in 2016, was being run by interim director Spencer Crew after Bunch was appointed Smithsonian secretary last spring, becoming the first Black American to lead the national museums.

“I am both unbelievably happy that somebody of his caliber is going to carry on, and a little sad. I can’t go back,” Bunch, who selected Young as his successor, told the Washington Post.

The author of 11 books of poetry, Young takes the helm of the museum at a time of heightened racial tensions in the US and after a summer of nationwide protests against police violence.

The museum is “definitely at the center of that conversation. What I am struck with is how the museum tells the story of the long civil rights struggle, which didn’t start this summer, and provides that context,” Young told the New York Times...

Read on at Artnet. And congrats to Kevin!