Building Homes for Black History: Museum Founders, Founding Directors, and Pioneers, 1915–95

Fath Davis Ruffins is the Curator of African American History and Culture in the Division of Home and Community Life in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). She has been a historian and curator at the Smithsonian Institution since 1981, working in several different divisions over that time. Between 1988 and 2005, she was the head of the Collection of Advertising History at the NMAH Archives Center. She is a specialist in ethnic imagery in popular culture, the history of advertising, the history of African American preservation efforts, and on the origins of ethnic museums on the National Mall. Ruffins has curated or consulted on several major Smithsonian exhibitions, other African American exhibitions and on many community history projects around the country. Between 2011 and 2014, she served as original project director of Many Voices, One Nation, and an exhibition that opened at NMAH in 2017. At present, she is at work on a book project that examines how the Smithsonian Institution changed over the last fifty years to become more diverse in terms of collections, exhibitions and staff. The working title is “Curating While Black.”