Vashti DuBois
2023 Women’s History Month
Before creating The Colored Girls Museum (TCGM), Vashti DuBois held leadership positions at several organizations over her 30-year career in non-profit and arts administration.
DuBois’ work focused primarily on issues impacting girls and women of color at organizations such as The Free Library of Philadelphia, Tree House Books, the historic Church of the Advocate, the Children’s Art Carnival in New York City, the Haymarket People’s Fund in Boston, Congreso Girls Center and The Leeway Foundation.
In 2015, DuBois opened TCGM to “honor the stories, experiences, and history of Colored Girls throughout the African Diaspora.”
It is the first memoir museum offering visitors a multi-disciplinary experience in a residential space.
TCGM initiates the ordinary object, submitted by the colored girl herself, as a representative of an aspect of her story and personal history that she finds meaningful.
Dubois was awarded the Arts and Business Leadership Award for Outstanding Dedication to Women and Girls of Color and for providing agency and visibility for the practices and histories of artists often excluded from the canon.
TCGM has been engineered to pop up in other cities and neighborhoods around the country, transforming ordinary spaces into Colored Girls Museum outposts that collect, archive, and share the stories of indigenous Colored Girls.
DuBois is a graduate of Wesleyan University and a NAMAC Fellow. She is working on a book about making The Colored Girls Museum.