Nichole N. Bridges is the Morton D. May Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Bridges joined the museum in 2013, having previously served as associate curator at the Newark Museum; as well as the head of the Department of the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific Islands at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Bridges holds undergraduate degrees in Fine Arts (Art History) and French from Amherst College, Amherst, Mass. She holds a master’s degree and doctorate in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where her dissertation focused on 19th-century Kongo ivories from the Loango Coast of west-central Africa. She has received numerous academic awards, including a Fulbright grant for research in the Republic of Congo and the 2010 Prix de Thèse from the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris.
Notable media appearances and mentions
- African art exhibit at St. Louis Art Museum tells a story about storytelling (St. Louis Public Radio, Nov. 7, 2024)
- Narrative Wisdom: Exploring the Power of African Storytelling Through Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum (ART AFRICA, Nov. 5, 2024)
- “Narrative Wisdom and African Arts” tells a new story at the Saint Louis Art Museum (St. Louis Magazine, Oct. 31, 2024)
- Largest African art exhibition at Saint Louis Art Museum being staged (See Great Art, Oct. 15, 2024)
- Arts Interview with Nancy Kranzberg (KDHX, May 15, 2017)
- Bridging African art and St. Louis (The St. Louis American, July 22, 2015)
- St. Louis Art Museum explores important territory in ‘Atua: Sacred Gods from Polynesia’ (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 12, 2014)
- Radio interview: Saint Louis Art Museum opens Polynesian sculpture exhibit (St. Louis Public Radio, Oct. 10, 2014)
Recent and upcoming SLAM exhibitions
- Narrative Wisdom and African Arts (2024)
- Aso Oke: Prestige Cloth from Nigeria (2023)
- Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa (2015)
- Adorning Self and Space: West African Textiles (2015)
- Currents 109: Nick Cave (2014)
