Curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo, ‘Among the many Most Compelling Voices in Contemporary Photography Today,’ is Departing MoMA to Be part of Metropolitan Museum of Art

ONE MAJOR NEW YORK MUSEUM’S LOSS is one other’s acquire. The Metropolitan Museum of Art just lately introduced a brand new appointment. Oluremi C. Onabanjo is becoming a member of The Met within the position of curator within the Department of Photography. Onabanjo is presently the Peter Schub Curator within the Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography on the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the place her exhibition “Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination” is on view by way of July 25. She departs MoMA this month and begins at The Met in August.

“Oluremi C. Onabanjo is among the most compelling voices in contemporary photography today. Her scholarship and curatorial vision reflect a deep engagement with the histories of the medium and a thoughtful approach to the ways photography shapes our understanding of the world,” Met Director and CEO Max Hollein mentioned in a press release when the appointment was introduced in April.

 

Oluremi C. Onabanjo. | Photo by Naima Green, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

The recipient of the inaugural Vilcek Foundation Prize for Curatorial Work (2025), Onabanjo’s curatorial apply focuses on the historical past of pictures all through the African continent and the African Diaspora with a selected curiosity within the social, political, cultural, aesthetic, and archival features of the medium.

In 2021, she joined MoMA as affiliate curator of pictures working with assortment of greater than 35,000 works. She was promoted to curator in 2024. At MoMA, her broadly celebrated exhibitions have included “Ideas of Africa;” “Projects: Ming Smith” (2023), co-curated with Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and “New Photography 2023: Kelani Abass, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Yagazie Emezi, Amanda Iheme, Abraham Oghobase, Karl Ohiri, Logo Oluwamuyiwa,” which was the primary group present in MoMA’s historical past to current works by residing West African photographers.

Previously, Onabanjo was director of exhibitions and collections at The Walther Collection, a famend worldwide assortment the place she deliberate exhibits and lead the acquisition, analysis, and publication program (2014-21). She additionally served on the curatorial workforce of the eighth Triennial of Photography Hamburg in (2022).

Onabanjo has taught, lectured, and written broadly. She studied at Columbia University, the place she earned a Ph.D., in artwork historical past and a BA in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African research. In addition, she holds an MSc in visible, materials, and museum anthropology from Oxford University.

“Oluremi C. Onabanjo is among the most compelling voices in contemporary photography today. Her scholarship and curatorial vision reflect a deep engagement with the histories of the medium and a thoughtful approach to the ways photography shapes our understanding of the world.” — Met Museum Director and CEO Max Hollein

 

AT THE MET, Onabanjo might be working with a set of practically 90,000 works—courting from 1839 to the current, throughout pictures and time-based media—together with the archives of Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Harlem Renaissance Photography James Van Der Zee. She will develop exhibitions, acquisitions, and scholarship with a concentrate on Twentieth and twenty first century pictures, notably worldwide practices in Africa and Asia. Her portfolio additionally contains collaborating with different museum departments to increase the presentation and curatorial consideration of the medium.

“Onabanjo brings a remarkable depth of knowledge and a rigorous approach to the study of photography,” Jeff Rosenheim, The Met’s Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, mentioned in a press release. “Her work reflects a nuanced understanding of the medium’s histories and its global trajectories, as well as a strong commitment to expanding the collection in meaningful and enduring ways. We look forward to the perspectives she will bring to the Department and to the Museum as a whole.”

The appointment features a full-circle alternative. Onabanjo will assist steward works from the Walther Collection, which she helped construct early in her profession. In 2025, The Met obtained a landmark reward of greater than 6,500 images, albums, and time-based media from The Walther Collection, together with trendy and modern works from the African continent, Germany, China, and Japan, amongst different places, together with Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century vernacular images from the United States, Europe, Colombia, and Mexico. A complete exhibition of the works is scheduled for 2028.

“I am honored to join The Met at such a dynamic moment as it looks ahead to the future of Photography in the Museum,” Onabanjo mentioned in a press release. “The Met’s extraordinary collection and its commitment to presenting art across cultures and time offer a powerful context for rethinking the histories of photography. I look forward to contributing to the Department’s work and to engaging new audiences with the medium.” CT

 

BOOKSHELF
Oluremi C. Onabanjo edited the exhibition catalog “Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination.” She can also be the creator of “Ming Smith: Invisible Man, Somewhere Everywhere,” and editor of “Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos,” which appeared on Culture Type’s record of the Best Black Art Books of 2022. Onabanjo has contributed to different volumes, together with “Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait” and “Suite 718: The Walther Collection Project Space, New York” She additionally co-edited “Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from the Walther Collection.”