Lucy Mensah

Lucy Mensah is Visiting Assistant Professor of Museum and Exhibition Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago’s School of Art & Art History. Prior to this, she was an assistant curator of contemporary art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Before the DIA, Mensah was an art history fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She assisted in acquisition research and collection management. Furthermore, she developed a research project examining the incorporation of West African textile design in Afrofuturist art and fashion. Her educational background combines studies in 20th century African American literature and visual culture. Mensah received a B.A. in English from Bucknell University (2009), an M.A. in Literary & Culture Studies from Carnegie Mellon University (2011), and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University (2016). Her dissertation, Designing Cities & Men: Post WWII Urban Renewal, Black Masculinity, and African American Aesthetics, examined the influence of post-WWII urban renewal in the literary and visual representations of masculinity by African American writers and artists. She completed a fellowship at the National Museum of American History in the summer of 2013, and worked as a curatorial intern at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts from 2015-2016. She recently co-curated a show at the DIA titled Making Home: Contemporary Works from the DIA, a permanent collection show that presents artwork that portray literal and conceptual ideas of home.