She has been a consulting scholar in the African Section of the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia since 2007.
CLEVELAND, OH, April 02, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Kathy Curnow, PhD, has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
An expert in African and African American art history, Dr. Curnow has been a professor in the Department of Art and Design at Cleveland State University since 1990. Initially hired as a visiting assistant professor, she was promoted to full professor in 2023. In addition to teaching various courses related to art history, Dr. Curnow serves as the curator of Cleveland State's African and African American Art Collection. Besides her work at the university, she has been a consulting scholar in the African Section of the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia since 2007.
Before her commitments at Cleveland State University, Dr. Curnow was an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1988 to 1990, at Lincoln University in 1988/89, and at the University of the Arts in 1989. She headed the General Studies Department at NTA TV College in Jos, Nigeria, between 1983 and 1988. During her years in Nigeria, Dr. Curnow also developed the college's original curriculum, produced a children's television special, acted in several productions, and was active with the wardrobe team for a joint production of a South African film.
Renowned for specializing in the study of African pre-colonial art history, specifically the Benin Kingdom, Dr. Curnow is the only current foreign art historian to focus on Benin art history who conducted fifteen years of research during periodic residence there. Dr. Curnow received a Senior Research Fellowship in art history at the Smithsonian Institution in 2016 and 2017 to write about the patronage of a particular 16th-century ruler for an upcoming book, Self-Curation: Oba Esigie's Visual Autobiography. She also received a two-year Fulbright Award for Nigeria, and a National Endowment for the Humanities collaborative grant. She has disseminated her findings in various peer-reviewed journals, including several from Nigeria. Moreover, Dr. Curnow has published chapters in several scholarly books, including The Routledge Companion to Global Renaissance Art in 2024 and Benin Kings and Rituals in 2007. Her guide to the Penn Museum's Benin collection will be published in 2024. She curated two exhibitions, one at the Penn Museum in 2008 called "Iyare! Splendor and Tension in Benin's Palace Theatre" and one at Cleveland State, entitled "At Home in Africa: Design, Beauty, and Pleasing Irregularity in Domestic Design" in 2017. Each has an accompanying catalogue.
Among other accomplishments, Dr. Curnow established a website, "Bright Insight," https://access.thebrightcontinent.org/. This map-based public website provides access to African architecture, public art, and community planning. Additionally, Dr. Curnow released an open-access textbook on African art history called The Bright Continent, which is available in PDF format and includes approximately 1,000 photos.
Dr. Curnow graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in art history from the Pennsylvania State University in 1976, followed by a Master of Arts in African art history and a Doctor of Philosophy in African art history and African studies from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1980 and 1983, respectively.
Recognizing her achievements, Dr. Curnow received a Fulbright-Hays Seminar in Brazil in 2000, a Cleveland State University Textbook Hero Award in 2020, and several research and teaching awards during the 1990s. She also received an Individual Excellence Award in Fiction from the Ohio Arts Council in 2022, as well as several writing residency awards for her African-related novels.
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