College Art Association CEO and leadership

Meme Omogbai is a Director & Chief Executive Officer at College Art Association and is based in Newark, New Jersey. She has worked as President at Meme Omogbai & Associates, LLC; COO/Deputy Assistant Chancellor, Higher Education Assistance Authority and Student Assistance Board at STATE OF NEW JERSEY; and Co-Director/Interim CEO (2013-2014) | Member, Board of Trustees (1995-2014) | COO/CFO (1995-2013) at Newark Museum. Meme attended Rutgers University Newark.

I currently serve as the Chief Curator at the Delaware Art Museum, a rotating position that has me managing a department of seven.

As the Museum's Curator of American Art, I also oversee a collection of American art and illustration spanning 1757 to 1960. The collection encompasses about 9,500 works of painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography. I am planning the 2020 reinstallation of our permanent collection galleries dedicated to American art and illustration through the 1920s.

The Museum’s collection is particularly strong in the work of American painter and illustrator John Sloan (1871-1951) and his circle, and we have significant archival resources related to these artists. I regularly assist scholars and collectors with questions related to these collections, and I publish, lecture, and assemble exhibitions focused on Sloan and The Eight. I co-curated Seeing the City: Sloan's New York, with Joyce K. Schiller, and edited the exhibition catalog, John Sloan's New York, which was well reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. In 2013-14, I published, lectured, and taught on William Glackens in support of the retrospective exhibition at the Barnes Foundation. In 2017, I curated An American Journey: The Art of John Sloan, a full career retrospective of the artist drawn entirely from the Museum's collection.

In 2018, I assumed responsibility for the American illustration collection, which is focused on the work of Howard Pyle and his students, but encompasses a wide range of illustration produced between 1800 and 1940. In 2011, I edited and wrote two essays for Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered. Forthcoming projects in American illustration include exhibitions on Jazz Age Illustration and women illustrators.

At the Museum, I also curate exhibitions of 19th- and 20th-century photography. In 2013 I curated a small exhibition on Gertrude Kasebier's photographs of The Eight, and in 2014 I curated two exhibitions on photography: Fashion, Circus, Spectacle: Photographs by Scott Heiser in the spring and Nature Morte: Platinum Prints by Bruce Katsiff in the fall.

In the area of humor studies, I co-taught a seminar called Comic Modern with Margaret Werth at the University of Delaware in 2013, and we co-chaired a panel by the same name at CAA 2015.

When my schedule permits, I do freelance writing and editorial work, give public lectures, jury exhibitions, and teach in my areas of expertise.