BMA Announces Rhea L. Combs and Ellen McBreen as Recipients of Two Major Curatorial Fellowships

Dr. Rhea L. Combs will start in her new role as Senior Fellow in Contemporary and Global Art on February 17, 2026. The two-year, independent fellowship emphasizes the future of curatorial practice and considers new models for the study and presentation of art that are rooted in cultural equity, global collaboration, and the unique qualities of contemporary practice to advance meaningful change within the field and beyond. Within her work, Combs will focus on opportunities to amplify historically marginalized voices, international cultural exchange, and community engagement.

The fellowship is designed to evolve in response to direct dialogue and collaboration with artists, collectives, and institutions in the U.S, Canada, Europe, and across the African diaspora. Given the intentionally responsive nature of the fellowship, it may culminate in the development of a book, an international cultural convening, or a range of exhibition concepts. The fellowship is generously funded by the Ford Foundation and The Hearthland Foundation, as part of each foundation’s own investments in cultivating visionary leaders and supporting cultural production.

Combs has dedicated her career to exploring how visual culture can shape our shared history. An award-winning curator, she brings more than two decades of curatorial and museum experience to her new fellowship. Most recently, Combs served as the Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (2021 – 2026). In this role, she led the museum’s curatorial and conservation teams, guided the acquisitions and exhibitions strategy, shepherded high-profile portrait commissions, and helped raise more than $3.5M for a range of projects. Among her recent curatorial projects are American Winners: Athletes and Entertainers that Helped Shape the Nation (2025) and This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance (2024–2025), in collaboration with author and curator Hilton Als. She also co-curated Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, which was presented at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and traveled to the Detroit Institute of the Arts (2022-2024).

Previously, Combs was the Senior Curator of Photography and Film and the founding director of the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts (CAAMA) at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. There, her work centered on Black visual traditions, cultural memory, and representation through photography and film. She was instrumental in building one of the most comprehensive collections of African American visual culture in the nation and curated numerous exhibitions, including Now Showing: African American Movie Posters (2019–21) and Represent: Hip Hop Photography (2018–2019), among others.

Combs’s writings have appeared in numerous publications and exhibition catalogues, including for the publication accompanying Amy Sherald: American Sublime. She has served on art juries, given numerous public presentations throughout the country including at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Metropolitan Museum of Art, and independently curated exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and ICA London. Additionally, Combs has experience as an administrator in higher education and taught courses in visual culture, American studies, film and gender at Emory University, Lewis & Clark College, and Chicago State University. She holds a PhD in American Studies from Emory University, an MA from Cornell University, and a BA from Howard University.

Dr. Ellen McBreen began her new role as a Fellow at the BMA’s Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies in the fall of 2025. The two-year fellowship invites curators, researchers, and scholars to engage with the museum’s extensive holdings of modern icon Henri Matisse. The BMA is home to more than 1,600 objects by the artist, making it the largest public collection of his work in the world. The collection has been built through the support of private benefactors and in recent years through close collaboration with the artist’s family. In 2021, the BMA opened the Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies to advance new scholarship and public engagement with the artist’s enduring legacy. The inaugural visiting fellowship was held by curator and scholar Dr. Denise Murrell, whose research is culminating with the opening of Matisse and Martinique: Portraits and Poetry on March 18, 2026, an exhibition that she is guest curating.

During her fellowship, McBreen will be working closely with Katy Rothkopf, the BMA’s Anne and Ben Cone Director of The Ruth R. Marder Matisse Center, on researching and contributing an essay to the catalog for a forthcoming major Matisse exhibition. McBreen’s past work, exploring how art shapes points of contact across cultural boundaries, real or imagined, will bring new perspectives to Matisse scholarship.

McBreen’s research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art, design, and visual culture in Europe as well as 20th-century art in the U.S. She is professor of History of Art at Wheaton College, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary art. She also recently served as the Director of the Wheaton Institute for the Interdisciplinary Humanities (2022-2024). She has written and presented extensively on Matisse. Her recent book credits include Henri Matisse (2025), a comprehensive monograph co-authored with Claudine Grammont, and Matisse’s Sculpture: The Pinup and the Primitive (2014). In 2017, McBreen co-curated Matisse in the Studio at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Royal Academy of Arts, London. She penned two chapters and co-edited the accompanying catalog of the same name. Her essays on other aspects of the artist’s practice have appeared in exhibition catalogs for the Fondation Beyeler, Musée Matisse Nice, Saint Louis Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Kunsthaus Zürich.

McBreen has been an invited speaker at the Barnes Foundation, Bruce Museum, Guggenheim Museum, and RISD Museum, among others. Her other area of scholarly focus is the European avant-garde’s reception and understanding of African material culture, which she explored as co-curator for the exhibition Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (2020) in Venice. She holds a PhD and MA from New York University and a BA from Harvard University.