A Star Curator Returns Home

If Trevor Schoonmaker were a self-absorbed man, his fingers would be inked black from flipping through his copious in-print praise.

Instead, the Nasher Museum of Art's new curator of contemporary art-the trim, goateed co-founder of the Brooklyn Institute for Contemporary Art, celebrated independent curator and scholar of pan-African art-is one of North Carolina's most modest sons.

"It's not that I knew it was going to be a big deal to critics, that's not what I mean," Schoonmaker says of one his career highlights. "But the artists that were interested [in that show]-well, there were a lot of really big names." He's momentarily moved away from his crisp curatorial diction, and in doing so, betrays his Southern accent.

But Schoonmaker's success story is different from that of other the-South-to-the-City pilgrims that came before him. First of all, it wasn't a direct route, involving a wanderlust that has sent him everywhere from Wake County to the West African Coast.

And the vaunted curator's next destination? A return to sweet home Carolina after years of on-the-road adventures. For someone young and successful, as Schoonmaker is, the move is certainly atypical. But return he has, and if it's not an easy transition, that-so he says-is the point.

Schoonmaker earned a Master's in art history at the University of Michigan and, after significant international travel, moved to New York, where he curated BLACK PRESIDENT: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. He conceived the exhibition as a showcase for the work of Kuti, a musician described as the Nigerian Bob Marley of Afrobeat music, and executed it from the ground up late in 2003, earning the trust and cooperation of Kuti's family-a feat akin to getting the Marley clan on board for a reggae retrospective. The show was a sleeper hit among artists. Critics clambered aboard next, with one art critic from The New York Times giving Schoonmaker special attention.

Then and now, the key to a making a show worthwhile is finding a challenge, Schoonmaker says. "We're not behind sort of present work that everyone is familiar with," he says of his impending Nasher endeavor, and you can hear the gears turning in his head. "The challenge is getting people to pay attention to us, to put North Carolina on the map-but that challenge is welcome."

Speaking of welcome, Mr. Schoonmaker-welcome back.