Mary Schmidt Campbell will serve as the 10th president of Atlanta-based Spelman College, the institution recently announced.
Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell
According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Schmidt will begin her new position on August 1, taking the place of current president Beverly Daniel Tatum, who is stepping down.
Dr. Campbell is currently the dean emerita of the Tisch School of the Arts and University Professor of art and public policy at New York University.
Prior to that, Campbell served at the Studio Museum in Harlem and was the cultural affairs commissioner for the City of New York. She was a dean at New York University for two decades.
In addition to her profession in the school system, Dr. Campbell also is an author. She is the co-author of “Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America” (Harry N. Abrams, 1994) and “Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940-1987” (Oxford University Press, 1991).
Campbell graduated from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, receiving her undergraduate degree in English literature. She continued her studies by earning her master’s degree in art history and a Ph.D. in humanities from Syracuse University.