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| Joy Bivins | |
The New York Public Library has named Joy Bivins director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, effective June 21. She succeeds Kevin Young, who left in January to lead the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. She is the first woman to lead the Schomburg Center since Jean Blackwell Hutson's tenure ended in 1980.
Bivins, who has been associate director of collections and research services at the Schomburg Center since June 2020, "brings to the position nearly two decades of expert leadership, extensive curatorial knowledge, and a unique ability to help audiences make sense of history--something certainly needed now," the NYPL noted.
Before joining the center, Bivins was chief curator of the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C. Prior to that, she was the director of curatorial affairs at the Chicago History Museum. She began her career as exhibition developer of Chicago History Museum's Teen Chicago project. Bivins received her master's degree in Africana Studies from Cornell University and received her bachelor's degree in history and Afroamerican and African Studies from the University of Michigan.
"After a year of unprecedented isolation, during which we saw the centrality of the Black Lives Matter movement, we need to come together again and make sense of what we have lived through," said Bivins. "The Schomburg Center, with its robust collections and rich legacy, has a key role to play in this moment, bringing people together, facilitating conversations, and continuing to ensure that the perspectives and histories of the Black community and members of the African Diaspora are preserved and understood. In my career, I have worked to help others make sense of history, to make connections between the past and the present, and to help create a true understanding of where we are now and where we are going. I am extremely humbled and thankful for the opportunity to take those expertise and lead the incredible, expert team at the Schomburg Center through this critical moment. I look forward to every minute.”
William Kelly, the library's Andrew W. Mellon director of the research libraries, commented: "We did an exhaustive search for many months, and it was clear to everyone that Joy brought so much to the table, a unique set of expertise needed at this historic time. This job has so many components. You have to be a librarian. A curator. You need to understand preservation and processing. You need to be a storyteller. You need to understand how to best share stories and present collections. She can do it all. She has been such a caring, inspirational leader over the last extremely challenging year, and I look forward to seeing all that she will accomplish as the director."