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Tsione Wolde-Michael is the Chief of Staff at the National Gallery of Art. Previously, she was the Executive Director of President Biden’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and a Curator of African American Social Justice History at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Tsione’s work has focused on creating innovative approaches to community engagement, collections management, heritage preservation, and exhibitions including the landmark Slavery and Freedom show at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her international work through the Slave Wreck’s Project has included assignments in South Africa and Mozambique to recover first-known objects from underwater slave ship wrecks and work with local public history institutions to reinterpret colonial collections. Tsione’s experience in the field of public history also extends to digital media and online exhibitions, curating visual art, writing for academic publications, teaching, and lecturing around the country. Her projects included a special joint Smithsonian-wide initiative to document the history of the Black Lives Matter movement. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Women and Gender Studies from Macalester College and a master’s degree in History from Harvard University, where she was a Ph.D. Candidate in the same field.
“In order to create transformative change we must reckon with our collective past. How we choose to remember that history, reproduce it, and/or contest it in public space matters.”
Learn more about Tsione’s Landecker Democracy Fellowship project here.
Updated 2025