Steven Nelson

Clark Fellow

Fall 2026-2027

Steven Nelson is executive director of the Sam Gilliam Foundation and professor emeritus of art history and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nelson has published widely on the arts, architecture, and urbanism of Africa and its diasporas and on queer studies. He is a member of the Boards of Trustees of the Kress Foundation, Bard Graduate Center, and Educare DC. He has held visiting appointments at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and has been appointed a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Association of Art History in the United Kingdom. Nelson was dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art from 2020-2025. At the Clark, he will work on a book provisionally titled Why the Underground Railroad Matters.