Tammi Lawson is a Curator of the Art & Artifacts Division at the New York Public Library’s renowned Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The collection she oversees was born during the iconic Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and today houses approximately 15,000 works of fine art and artifacts that reflect the history and expressive culture of the African Diaspora.

The items conserved within Lawson’s division range from fine art (paintings and sculpture); African art (regional drawings, sculpture, masks); works on paper; textiles; and important representations of ephemeral and material culture. Lawson has advised and supported the scholars and curators who visit the collection to research and prepare articles, books, catalogs, and exhibitions focused upon black art and artists. As a curator, she collaborated on the Schomburg exhibition Curators’ Choice: Black Life Matters.

In 2015, Lawson was part of the Schomburg team presented with the Institute of Museum and Library Service’s National Medal Award, the highest honor for community service bestowed upon an American museum or library. “An exciting result of receiving the IMLS award was that we were given the opportunity to record oral histories for StoryCorps,” Lawson recalls. “My conversation with Artist Xenobia Bailey has been archived permanently within the Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.”

Lawson holds a B.A. from the College of Staten Island and a master’s degree in Information and Library Sciences from Queens College in New York.