Richard Kurin

As a member of the Smithsonian’s senior leadership team, Richard Kurin helps guide the Institution’s national museums, pre-eminent research centers, and educational programs with a staff of 6,500 and annual budget of $1.5 billion. His areas of focus are the Smithsonian’s strategic direction, institutional partnerships, public representation, philanthropic support, and special initiatives. Prior to his current role, Kurin served as Acting Provost and Under Secretary for Museums and Research from 2015, and from 2007 served as Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture. For two decades before that, Kurin directed the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

Kurin was appointed by successive Secretaries of State to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and helped draft an international treaty to safeguard living cultural heritage now ratified by 170 nations. He led efforts to save heritage in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and has overseen projects for saving heritage endangered by natural disaster in Nepal and the U.S., and by human conflict in Mali, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. Kurin served as liaison to the U.S. President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and the White House Historical Association, and chairs a task group for the U.S. Department of State Cultural Heritage Coordinating Committee. He is a board member of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas and serves on the Visiting Committee for the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He has been honored by Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, the International Council of Museums, the American Anthropological Association, the American Folklore Society, and the Smithsonian, and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

An anthropologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Kurin specialized in the study of South Asia. He has held Fulbright and Social Science Research Council fellowships, taught at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and authored six books, including the best-selling The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objects.