Gabriel Tenabe
Director of the Office of Museums at Morgan State University
gtenabe@morgan.edu
Gabriel Tenabe has forty years’ experience as an educator and as administrator of cultural programs and organizations. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Art History and Museology from Morgan State University with concentrations in Museum Management, and History of African, and African American Art and Culture. In 1977 he took the position of full-time curator in the gallery and in 1986 when James Lewis decided to retire, Tenabe became the acting director. When the gallery was relocated to the newly built Murphy Fine Arts Center in 1990, Tenabe became the Director of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, which he is credited for naming in honor of the museum’s founder and his close friend. When Morgan acquired the Lillie Carroll Jackson Museum in 1996 the Office of Museums was created with Tenabe as its Director, encompassing both museums along with the Center for Museums and Historical Preservation, the public programming arm of JELMA.
As an artist himself, Tenabe has works in the collections of over ten institutions, including Morgan, and those of collectors on three continents. He has developed and mounted more than 100 exhibitions. Among the travelling exhibitions is a partnership he initiated with Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services for William H. Johnson: An American Modern, which traveled works from the James E. Lewis collection for over three years.