Working from the premise that an exhibition isn’t ‘finished’ when it opens to the public and that publics are collaborators, Smithsonian Curator and Curatorial Intensive Alumna Masum Momaya reflects on her curatorial practice, using Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation as a starting point. The exhibition––on view through August 15, 2015 at the National Museum of Natural History––explores the cultural, political, and professional contributions of Indian immigrants and Indian Americans in shaping U.S. history. For her Curatorial Hub talk, Momaya will discuss crowdsourcing and open calls for submission as cornerstones of her curatorial practice in a staid institution; training community members (some of whom contest exhibition narratives) to be docents; and condemning longstanding orientalism in museum legacy by leading public tours and through interactions with media.

Masum Momaya is currently Museum Curator at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program in Washington, DC. Her upcoming show Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation, will show at the National Museum of Natural History from February 2014 to August 2015, and then travel around the country through 2020. Prior to this, she was Curator at the International Museum of Women (2007–09), Curator for the (AWID) Association for Women’s Rights in Development (2009–12), and Curatorial Consultant for the Indo-American Heritage Museum (2010–11). Aside from Beyond Bollywood, her exhibitions include Women, Power and Politics; Economica: Women and the Global Economy; Nazar DeÄŸmesin (featuring Turkish artist Ece Budak) in Istanbul; and H1B, online and at the Twelve Gates Arts’ in Philadelphia. Academically, Momaya is trained as an interdisciplinary social scientist, with a EdD (2007) in Human and International Development from Harvard University, an MA (2001) in Education from Harvard University, and an honors BA (1999) in Public Policy and Feminist Studies from Stanford University. View her portfolio at http://www.masummomaya.com.

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