Diana Baird N’Diaye, PhD
Diana Baird N’Diaye, PhD
Diana Baird N’Diaye, PhD
Diana N’Diaye with Ba and Her Daughters, a quilt she made to honor her great grandmother. Photo by Reginald Cunningham.
As senior curator and cultural specialist at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Diana Baird N’Diaye’s focus was the expressive cultures of Africa and its diasporas, and curating Folklife Festival programs and exhibitions. In 2020 she developed and curated the African American Craft Initiative (AACI), which grew out of Baird N’Diaye’s participatory research projects/exhibitions The Crafts of African Fashion, which spotlighted African artisans’ textiles, jewelry, and leatherwork for fashion designers, and The Will to Adorn, which focused on the diversity of African American style.
“I noticed throughout the craft sector that African American makers were grossly underrepresented and under-documented. With few exceptions, we were disconnected from the national and regional studio arts organizations—and each other,” she recalls. The AACI strove “to promote exchanges between Black makers and within the field as a whole” through a variety of programs, resources, and services, including publishing partnerships. While the work of AACI has ended at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, it has continued as the African American Craft Alliance, supported by the Folk School Alliance.
I’m in the employ of the ancestors.
Diana Baird N’Diaye
Baird N’Diaye, featured in a 2022 American Craft article about visionaries in craft, balances her research-based curatorial practice and folklore scholarship with her studio practice in textile art. Shaped by conversations and stories experienced in childhood during needlework training with her elder Caribbean aunties, and inspired by the symbolism, patterns, and spiritual meanings discovered in textile traditions learned from master makers and storytellers around the world, Baird N’Diaye creates visual stories in cloth about identity and heritage, history and aspirational futures. Her artwork resides in public and private collections.
With degrees in anthropology and a PhD from Union Institute Graduate School, Baird N’Diaye continues to advocate for equal representation in the crafts sector. She sits on the board of directors of the Center for Craft and has been awarded the Americo Paredes Award for community-centered folklore work from the American Folklore Society, where she is a fellow. Her work was recently exhibited in Afrofuturism & Quilts at the Union Gallery at Michigan State University. She was commissioned by the US Embassy to Senegal to curate the American participation in the DakArt Biennale, November 7 to December 6, 2024.
“I’m in the employ of the ancestors,” she says, “in terms of my family heritage and the larger heritage of global Africa. It has taken such strength, discipline, and creative spirit for our ancestors to overcome our challenges. Craft—the freedom, the self-sufficiency, the joy it brings—has been an essential part of that.”
Read more about the other 2024 ACC Awards recipients and honorees here.
Be part of the celebration
Join us Thursday, September 19 as we celebrate and honor individuals who have dedicated their careers to craft, and who—through their work as artists, educators, mentors, curators, and advocates—have inspired and informed the field.
This article was made possible with support from the Windgate Foundation.