Kevin Young
Andrew W. Mellon Director
Kevin Young is the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. As the nation's largest museum dedicated to telling the African American story, the 19th museum in the Smithsonian complex welcomes 2 million annual visitors and engages an international audience through world-class online programming and digital access to its collections.
Prior to joining the Smithsonian, Young served as the Director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 2016-2021, where he oversaw significant increases to its funding, archive acquisitions, and visitor reach. A professor for two decades, he began his career in museums and archives at Emory University in 2005, first as Curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library and later as the Curator of Literary Collections, while serving as Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing.
An award-winning author of fourteen books of poetry and prose, Young is the poetry editor of the New Yorker, where he also hosts the poetry podcast. Young’s most recent works include Stones (2021), Brown (2018) and Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts & Fake News (2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; two have also been named New York Times Notable Books. Other noteworthy titles include Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015 (2016), longlisted for the National Book Award; Book of Hours (2014), winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize and his nonfiction debut The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness (2012), which won the PEN Open Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book. His third poetry collection Jelly Roll: a blues (2003) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Young is also the editor of nine volumes, most recently the anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, released in fall 2020 from Library of America. The collection was named one of the best books of 2020 by the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, TIME, the Atlantic, Good Morning America, O, the Oprah Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Shelf Awareness, Lit Hub, and Barnes & Noble. The New York Times called it “monumental and rapturous”; NPR’s “Fresh Air” named it “the year’s most revelatory book”; and TIME magazine describes it as “a document both breathtaking and inspiring, historical and personal.”
Young holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College and a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University. He has held a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and a NEA fellowship. Director Young is active across the art and cultural community. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.
Museum Council
N. Anthony Coles
Chair
Board Chair, Cerevel Therapeutics
Edith Cooper
Vice Chair of Nominating and Governance Committee
Cofounder, Medley
Brian T. Moynihan
Vice Chair of Development Committee
Chairman and CEO, Bank of America
Earl W. Stafford
Vice Chair of Finance Committee
CEO, The Wentworth Group
Elizabeth Alexander
President, Mellon Foundation
Rosalind Brewer
Former CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance
Lonnie Bunch
Smithsonian Secretary
Laura Bush
Former, First Lady of the United States
Kenneth I. Chenault
Chairman and Managing Director, General Catalyst
Kenneth L. Coleman
Chairman, Saama Technologies, Inc.
Damien Dwin
Founder and CEO, Lafayette Square
Kenneth C. Frazier
Former Chairman & CEO, Merck
David Grain
CEO, Grain Management LLC
Tom Healy
Writer and Educator
Jonathan Holloway
President, Rutgers University
Cathy Hughes
Founder & Chairperson, Urban One, Inc.
LaTanya Richardson Jackson
Actress, Director, Producer
Cookie Johnson
Philanthropist, Entrepreneur, Author
Robert Johnson
Founder & Chairman, The RLJ Companies
Ted Leonsis
Founder, Chairman, Principal Partner & CEO,
Monumental Sports & Entertainment
Doris Matsui
Member, United States House of Representatives
Charles Edwards Phillips, Jr.
Co-founder & Managing Partner, Recognize
Emily Wei Rales
Co-Founder and Director, Glenstone Museum
Shonda Rhimes
Founder & Chief Storyteller, Shondaland
Danny Rimer
Partner, Index Ventures
Deborah Santana
CEO/Founder
Carlos Santiago
Commissioner Emeritus, Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
Darren Walker
President, Ford Foundation
Anthony Welters
Founder and CEO, CINQCARE
Nadja West
Retired 44th U.S. Army Surgeon General
Oprah Winfrey
CEO, Harpo, Inc.
Scholarly Advisory Committee
With noted historian Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) as its Founding Chairman beginning in 2005, the museum created a scholarly advisory committee to help shape its intellectual agenda, exhibition content and programming.