Sarah A. Clunis, Executive Director, Amistad Center for Art and Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art 

Dr. Sarah Clunis is originally from Kingston, Jamaica and received her PhD in art history in 2006 from the University of Iowa. She came to the Amistad Center from her role as Director of Academic Partnerships and Curator of the African Collection at the Peabody Museum of Archology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Before that, Clunis worked at Louisiana’s Xavier University where she was director of the Xavier University Art Gallery, supervisor of the Art Collection team, and assistant professor of art history. Dr. Clunis has taught art history for over twenty years at public universities and Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Dr. Clunis’ research and classes have focused on the history of African art and the display of African objects in Western museum settings. She also studies the influence of African aesthetics and philosophy on the arts and religious rituals and cultural identities of the African diaspora. Her work examines gender, race, and migration in multiple contexts. She has published in both national and international magazines and journalsm. 

Paul R. Davis, Curator of Collections, Menil Collection

Paul R. Davis's academic research and publications focus on the visual culture and sociopolitical histories from the colonial and post-independence eras (18th–20th century) in West Africa. He was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellow based in Mali (West Africa). Davis was co-director of the Collections Analysis Collaborative (CAC), an object-based research and educational initiative with Rice University and University of Houston Clear Lake that focused on the Menil’s ancient Mediterranean holdings. His exhibition projects at the Menil have included ReCollecting Dogon (2017), Mapa Wiya (Your Map's Not Needed): Australian Aboriginal Art from the Fondation Opale (2019), Enchanted: Visual Histories of the Central Andes (2021), Samuel Fosso: African Spirits (2022), Art of the Cameroon Grassfields, A Living Heritage in Houston (2023), and A Surrealist Wunderkammer (2024).

Patty Gerstenblith, Distinguished Research Professor, DePaul University College of Law

Patty Gerstenblith, PhD, JD, DHL h.c., is Distinguished Research Professor of Law at DePaul University and Director of its Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law. President Clinton and President Obama appointed her as a Member and then Chair of the President's Cultural Property Advisory Committee in the Department of State. Since 2020, she has served as President of the Board of Directors of the US Committee of the Blue Shield and Chair of the Blue Shield International Working Group on Trafficking of Cultural Objects. Her book, Cultural Objects and Reparative Justice: A Legal and Historical Analysis, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. The fifth edition of her casebook, Art, Cultural Heritage and the Law, will be published in 2025. Her most recent article, “Cultural Heritage and Security Policy,” co-authored with Dr. Morag M. Kersel, was published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Gerstenblith received her A.B. degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College, Ph.D. in Art History and Anthropology from Harvard University, and J.D. from Northwestern University. Before joining the DePaul faculty, she clerked for the Honorable Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.