• Mel Harper
• Projects Manager
• National Gallery of Art

Mel Harper (she/her) is an Interpretive projects manager at the National Gallery of Art, where she collaborates with curators, exhibition designers, digital teams, and more to craft interpretation for the museum’s temporary exhibitions and collection installations. Mel also co-facilitates the Inclusion Roundtable, where National Gallery staff gather monthly to unpack issues of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion affecting museums. Beyond her museum work, Mel co-produces conceptual art projects designed by DC-area visual, theater, and social practice artists. Mel received her MA in Black visual culture from Howard University, where she taught African American art history and managed the Prints & Photographs collection at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, a repository and archive of the African Diaspora. Mel is the current Ailsa Mellon Bruce Sabbatical Curatorial/Conservation Fellow for the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study of the Visual Arts.

Speaking In:

• Black Archive Fever