Gus Casely-Hayford will head back over the pond next year

Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford, Director of the National Museum of African Art since 2018, will leave the Smithsonian in in the spring to return to London as the inaugural director of V&A East. Scheduled to open in 2023, the V&A East project will create two interconnected sites in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London—a new museum and a new collection and research center at Here East.

Smithsonian National Museum of African Art Director Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford. (Credit — Franko Khoury, EEPA National Museum of African Art)

Casely-Hayford, an internationally renowned British curator, cultural historian, broadcaster, and lecturer, has made a tremendous impact at the African Art museum during the past two years. The museum’s galleries have been refurbished and the pavilion completely reimagined to support an intensive exhibitions program underpinned by groundbreaking scholarship. Among the exhibitions presented under his leadership are “Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women,” the first in-depth exhibition on the history of Senegal’s use of gold as decoration, and “I Am…Contemporary Women Artists of Africa,” which draws on the museum’s collections to explore contemporary feminism.

“We have achieved a great deal at NMAfA over the last two years,” Casely-Hayford said. “The things that fill me with the most pride are the refurbishment of our galleries and pavilion. The pavilion is wonderful—and we delivered it alongside an intensive exhibitions program that has been underpinned by some truly stunning scholarship. And I am very proud of the work that we are doing in Africa, building the partnerships and programs to deliver meaningful change to the sector and how we engage. All of this was only possible because of the great team at NMAfA—a support network that I will miss dearly.“

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