Nathan Wade, who helped lead former President Trump’s criminal prosecution in Georgia, resigned Friday after the judge called for him to do so over his romantic relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D). Read his resignation letter below.
Nathan Wade Resignation Letter by George L. Cook III on Scribd
The Smithsonian American Art Museum announced today that Dalila Scruggs will join its curatorial team as the Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art. Scruggs’s expertise ranges across different types of media—including painting, prints, sculpture and photography—from the 19th- and 20th centuries. In her new role, Scruggs will help shape the museum’s exhibition program and collecting priorities as they relate broadly to African American art, a longstanding area of strength of the museum’s holdings distinguished by its depth and range. She will also contribute to “American Voices and Visions,” a major cross-departmental initiative to comprehensively reinstall the museum’s collection. She begins work at the museum April 22.
The position is named to honor Savage’s legacy as an artist, teacher and community art program director in Harlem in the 1930s. Fittingly, Scruggs has served in education and curatorial roles and has sought to draw on her experience as a museum educator to cultivate a curatorial practice that is visitor- and object-centered.
“I am delighted to welcome Dalila Scruggs to SAAM as the inaugural Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art,” said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “SAAM is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world, and I am so pleased that Dr. Scruggs will bring fresh, thoughtful analysis to these works that evoke themes both universal and specific to the African American and the American experience.”
Scruggs comes to the museum from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she has been the curator for photography and prints since 2021. She also has served as a guest curator at the Brooklyn Museum since 2020. Previously, she has held positions at the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at the University of Alabama as a consulting curator, at the Brooklyn Museum as an assistant curator of American art and at the Williams College Museum of Art as a curatorial fellow.
Her publications include “Activism in Exile: Elizabeth Catlett’s Mask for Whites,” a contribution to the scholarly journal American Art, published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with the University of Chicago Press, and several exhibition catalogs, including contributions to Brooklyn Museum: Highlights collections handbook and an entry for the upcoming The Awe of the Arctic: A Visual History for the New York Public Library.
Scruggs joins the curatorial department led by Randall Griffey, the museum’s head curator and joins a team of 11 curators at the museum.
Scruggs graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in art history and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in the history of art and architecture. Her dissertation “’The Love of Liberty Has Brought Us Here’: The American Colonization Society and the Imaging of African-American Settlers in Liberia, West Africa” focuses on African American daguerreotypist August Washington and his photographs in service to the American Colonization Society, a 19th-century reform organization dedicated to sending African Americans to Liberia, West Africa as an alternative to promoting radical abolition or perpetual slavery in the United States. From 2007 to 2008, Scruggs was a Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s prestigious fellowship program.
The Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art is generously funded by anonymous donors with a $5 million endowment gift to the museum. The donors requested the position be named for the trailblazing artist and educator to elevate her legacy.
The NAACP has sent a letter to current and prospective members of the NCAA, calling for Black student athletes to reconsider their decisions to attend public colleges and universities in Florida. The letter comes following recent news that the University of Florida had dismantled its DEI department at the direction of the DeSantis administration's Stop WOKE Act. The bill, which was passed last year, prohibits the use of state funds for any diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. While the University of Florida has been the first to follow the directive, Florida is home to some of the nation's largest public universities, many of whom rely on Black talent recruited to their athletics programs.
Read that letter below:
NAACP Urges Student Athlete... by George L. Cook III
Kean University in Union, New Jersey, has established the Center for Africana Studies within the university’s College of Education to serve as an academic research resource for scholars, faculty, and students at Kean University, as well as cultural hub for Africana studies within the Union community.
The first initiative of the new center aims to support local public schools in developing programming aligned with New Jersey’s Amistad curriculum, which mandates teaching about the African slave trade, slavery in America, and the contributions Africans have made to American society. The new site will also offer cultural programming such as traveling exhibits to faculty, students, and the public. Additionally, the center will support Kean University’s minor in Africana Studies.
“This new center epitomizes the University’s commitment to equity and to serving our state, particularly our urban communities,” said Kean University president Lamont Repollet. “All young people deserve to know their past. We are dedicated to establishing the best, most effective curriculum and programming to ensure they have a full understanding of history to help them shape the future.”
The University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to name Dr. Martin Lemelle as the next president of Grambling State University.
“To this illustrious Board, to our Gram Fam across the globe, to our students, current and future, to our alumni community, my family, friends, and supporters … This is our story. This is the Grambling State University story,” Lemelle said.
The Grambling Presidential Search Committee narrowed the field to three finalists, Dr. Gregory Ford, Dr. Monica Williams, and Lemelle after interviewing six semifinalists on Grambling’s campus earlier this month.
“Dr. Lemelle’s appointment as the 11th president of Grambling State University guarantees a leader well-prepared on day one,” said Rick Gallot, who left the Grambling presidency to assume the role of UL System President and CEO at the start of the year . “I am confident that under President Lemelle’s leadership, Grambling State University will continue to thrive with its best days yet to come.”
Lemelle is a 2006 graduate and former student government association president of Grambling. He has most recently served as executive vice president & chief financial officer at Maryland Institute College of Art. Prior, he served as executive vice president and chief operating officer at GSU from 2016-2021.
Gallot and Board Chair Dr. Jimmy Clarke are authorized to negotiate Lemelle’s start date.
