'Being able to create these spaces of belonging where people can articulate the multiple identities they have is so important. I do it as often and as publicly as possible, so that other people can feel comfortable either claiming or not claiming.'
This experience led the Fulbright scholar to become the first curator of Latinx Studies at the in 2017 — only three months after the museum opened. Curtis has always been intentional about the role and what her title entails. “It's not curator of Afro-Latinx Studies. It's Latinx Studies. It's Latinidad through an African-American lens,” she says. “Blackness is not homogeneous, so we need to honor that diversity. We need to honor Latinx diversity.
“In this time of racial protest, I was coming out of my comfortable, Black-dominant space and saying, ‘I'm going to really experience the Smithsonian as a predominantly white institution and talk about institutional racism,’” Curtis says. “‘I’m going to figure out what our role as an institution is in these ongoing conversations on this history that we have collected but perhaps not interpreted in this way.
Curtis is no stranger to spearheading these necessary and uncomfortable discussions. However, now that she’s responsible for directing content about race and racism for the Smithsonian, her discourse has an institution-wide impact. Such was the case when thefounding member insisted the institution should explicitly say racism, not just race, in their language around racial inequality.