Dwandalyn Reece

Dr. Dwandalyn R. Reece is a musician, scholar and museum professional who has spent her entire career working in the public sector in the areas of history, culture and the arts. As Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Reece is responsible for the acquisition, research and interpretation of the museum’s music and performing arts collection. She is curator of the museum’s permanent exhibition, Musical Crossroads, for which she received the Secretary’s Research Prize in 2017 and currently serves as chair of the SI pan-institutional group, Smithsonian Music and co-curator of the 2019 initiative, the Smithsonian Year of Music. Other projects include the forthcoming Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap and a book on the material culture of African American music. Before joining the Smithsonian, Reece was a senior program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities and worked in several museums including the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the New Jersey State Museum and the Motown Historical Museum. She currently serves on the Society for American Music’s Education Committee, Council Chair for the Society for Ethnomusicology and is a member of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College in Claremont, CA.