Born in London, Oluremi C. Onabanjo grew up in Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and the United States. An avid reader and writer, her home life was filled with transnational forms of literature, art, film, and music. “I am at home in the world,” she says, “and deeply committed to seeing how specific encounters can shape perceptions that resonate on an international scale.”

Onabanjo’s international upbringing and intellectual commitments manifest in her curatorial practice, currently as Peter Schub Curator in the Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Her impact on the art world—championing artists and photographers across Africa and the African diaspora—helps transcend cultural and geopolitical boundaries.

Onabanjo receives the 2025 Vilcek Prize in Curatorial Work for her significant contributions to examining the power, position, and production of Blackness within the ongoing history of photography. Through scholarship, exhibitions, and publications, she expands how narratives of creativity, culture, and experience across Africa and the African diaspora are represented, constructed, and interpreted in artistic practice.

While pursuing African studies at Columbia University, Onabanjo took her first art history course and was captivated. The class touched on the emergent field of the history of African photography and sparked a new passion for her. “I am open to artistic and interpretive modes that I might not immediately understand, and trust in the power of form to resonate across geopolitical and cultural contexts,” she says.

A Labor of Love

Onabanjo is deeply dedicated to her work. Her curatorial practice is structured by four critical things: research, close attention to form, public engagement, and publishing. She dedicates extensive time to studying her subjects and engaging with artists to better understand their processes.

This commitment to detail was key in developing Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos (2022, Fourthwall Books & Center for Art, Research, and Alliances), one of Onabanjo’s critically acclaimed projects. The photo book chronicles Nance’s experiences in Lagos during the Second World Black and African Arts and Culture Festival in 1977. The project, which took six years to complete, was a labor of love for Onabanjo. 

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“This project was profoundly empowering, and deepened my belief that with patience and precision, all is possible,” Onabanjo says. She learned that the best way to ensure the integrity of the work is to prioritize the relationship with the artist.

She has carried this valuable understanding with her throughout her curatorial practice. For Onabanjo, working with the artists empowers and enriches her work as a curator.

Artistic Legacy

Onabanjo’s upbringing was steeped in the arts. She fondly recalls mornings filled with South African jazz, Nigerian poetry, and British novels, courtesy of her father. He helped foster her love for the arts by regularly taking her to libraries, museums, and cinemas. Though these experiences felt like chores at the time, she now credits them for her own sense of comfort within cultural institutions.

Onabanjo is a proud resident of Harlem, a neighborhood that is key to New York’s intellectual and cultural history. “It is a mythic place for many,” she says, “but for those of us who reside here, it’s a neighborhood for real humans who carry global histories and cultures in every stride.”