Biography
Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., president emerita of Spelman College, a leading women’s college dedicated to the education and global leadership of Black women, also served for over two decades as dean of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
An art historian and former curator, Campbell began her career in New York as executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the country’s first accredited Black fine arts museum and a linchpin in Harlem’s redevelopment. She served as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs under two mayors and in 2009, President Barack Obama appointed her vice chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Campbell currently sits on the boards of the Doris Duke Foundation, Unity Technologies, the Getty Trust, The Public Theater, and Juilliard. She is a member of the UBS Americas Advisory Council Campbell lectures and writes on the arts and higher education. She completed a biography of Romare Bearden for Oxford University Press in 2018 and has contributed to the forthcoming publications: Inventing the Modern: The Undisclosed Stories of the Women Who Contributed to the Making of the Museum of Modern Art, New York: Taschen, 2024 and a monograph on the artist, Sam Gilliam, London: Phaidon Press, publication pending, December, 2024.
Campbell received a B.A.in English literature from Swarthmore College, a M.A, in art history from Syracuse University, and a doctorate in humanities from Syracuse. She and her husband, Dr. George Campbell, Jr., also a former college president, live in Big Sky Montana.
