Bio:
Dr. Derrick León Washington is a cultural anthropologist, curator, dancer, and former Senior/Regional United Nations Human Rights Fellow specializing in museum curation, experiential education, and expressive arts of the Americas. He has an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles. He completed his master’s degree, curatorial portfolio certificate, and doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. His fieldwork throughout the Americas has translated into numerous exhibitions, workshops, programs/performances, and conference presentations. His curatorial work has been reviewed positively by media outlets such as the New York Times (multiple times), Artforum, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), ARTE (Europe), New York Post, UN Web TV, El Especialito, Huffington Post, National Public Radio (NPR), Le Monde (France), Univision, UN Department of Global Communications, UN News, and National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
He is Curator of Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor. The blockbuster exhibition and expansive program series at the Museum of the City of New York surveys over 300 years of social dance and music cultures created, innovated, and/or redefined in the City. Drawing on his original research, he conceived the exhibition, developed its title and curatorial framework, and identified, sourced, and secured more than 300 objects, including rare and never-before-exhibited materials that shaped its historical narrative and visual record. View the exhibit trailer, 8-minute documentary, or full documentary.
The first museum exhibition to center social dance and the first of its kind at an institution of any size, Urban Stomp takes audiences on a journey through the history of social dance through these materials, which include ephemera, contemporary art installations, monuments, photographs, ball dance cards from the mid-nineteenth century, ball gowns, ceremonial regalia, costumes, sculptures, film, musical instruments, dance maps, life-size electronic dance tutorials, and a dedicated dance space inspired by New York City’s iconic social dance floors. Over 90 dancers/culture bearers contributed to the 20+ dance tutorials and films for the exhibit’s immersive dance space. Extensive, interactive educational and public programming at the museum and throughout New York City highlights sections of the exhibition. The exhibition had the largest opening weekend attendance in the museum’s 100-plus-year history.
Mr. Washington is the author of Inside Urban Stomp: A Curator’s Guide to Exploring Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor, an illustrated companion book/workbook to the exhibition that explores its key themes, objects, related dance exercises, and curatorial vision. He created, produced, and hosted Urban Stomp: On the Record, a digital series featured across the Museum of the City of New York’s platforms that has become one of the museum’s most widely engaged public-facing initiatives. Mr. Washington also led tours that went beyond traditional walkthroughs, combining storytelling, dance, music, and guided movement to help audiences understand the exhibition through both history and lived experience. He successfully established strategic partnerships with organizations including the Institute of Jazz Studies, the Alvin Ailey Foundation, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He is the current Berger–Carter–Berger Fellow at the renowned Institute of Jazz Studies. At the Institute of Jazz Studies, home to the world’s largest and most comprehensive jazz library and archive, he uses its resources to support his current exhibitions and projects.
Mr. Washington’s journey of creating unified projects that embody the ethos of defiant joy began with his work on the Will to Adorn exhibition/project at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He later served as executive director of El Fogón Center for the Arts in New York City. As an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York, he conducted curatorial work on the permanent exhibitions, Activist New York and New York at Its Core. Continuing with applied anthropology work in New York City, he is a scholarly advisor for the New-York Historical Society’s upcoming multi-part exhibition, You Should Be Dancing: New York: 1976, opening October 2026.
He is Curator of Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York, a groundbreaking exhibition and expansive, interactive program series on salsa as an artistic social movement presented at the Museum of the City of New York. The project presents salsa as an artistic, social, political, and commercial movement: a music form, a way of making music, a family of dance styles, and a business shaped by Afro-Caribbean traditions, immigrant and migrant communities, record companies, clubs, dancers, musicians, promoters, and activist networks in New York City. Strategic partnerships helped programs reach thousands of people at the museum, throughout New York City’s five boroughs, and thousands more through extensive coverage in English and Spanish language media outlets. To date, Rhythm & Power has had the most extensive programming in terms of quantity and variety of any exhibition or project related to salsa. Building upon his curatorial work, Mr. Washington is the co-editor of the book, Rhythm & Power: Performing Salsa in Puerto Rican and Latino Communities (Centro Publications, 2017). Using research from this book, he was able to curate the cultural/educational components of the New York International Salsa Congress in 2017 and 2018. In collaboration with SummerStage, thousands of New Yorkers were able to enjoy live music and dance with musicians such as Joe Bataan and Andy Montañez. The exhibition inspired the feature-length documentary, Nueva York: A Musical History of Latin New York (2021). Mr. Washington was featured as an expert speaker and worked as a consultant. Featured on the ARTE television network, the documentary was broadcast in more than 22 nations in Europe. It received a positive review in one of France’s most influential and widely circulated newspapers, Le Monde. In 2023, he shared findings from the book and new research on one of the four national radio stations of Austria, Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF). Listing of press (here). View a short trailer of the documentary (here).
He is Curator and project director of Dreams & Defiance: A World Re-Imagined, an interactive program series taking place at institutions such as 92nd Street Y and New York University. It explores the complicated links between social music and dance forms practiced in the Andalusia region of southern Spain, Africa (notably North, West, and Central Africa), and throughout the Americas. In spring 2022, he was the first artist/curator/scholar to illuminate connections between cultures with objects, ephemera, archival film, and performance at the iconic Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. The filmed version includes a behind-the-scenes journey of known and lesser-known locations in the historic building, a curated presentation of artifacts and ephemera shown publicly for the first time in the theater's 100-plus-year history, the neighborhood of Harlem as a living archive, and performances featuring voice, music, movement, comedy, and fashion.
As an expert in expressive cultures and former senior/regional fellowship recipient from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, he is the director and curator of Urban Stomp: From Swing to Mambo™. Since 2018, Urban Stomp has been a curatorial platform that produces exhibitions, film, residencies, curriculum, and interactive public and educational programs across museums and cultural institutions. Grounded in movement and cultural anthropology, this project began with a documentary short film that was the basis of an article and an evening-length lecture-performance at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the summer of 2019. The initial funding for this project was made possible through the generous support from the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation and co-sponsors including the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Abyssinian Baptist Church, Frankie Manning Foundation, Bronx Music Heritage Center, and private donors. Movements Our Mothers Gave Us, Urban Stomp’s teacher-training project beginning in 2022 and reignited at Rutgers University a year later in 2023, is a curatorial project that includes a teaching artist professional development series, community visual arts projects, oral narratives, and interactive anthropology of dance courses that center multi-generational storytelling. The series has cultivated several community partnerships, including the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The seeds of this project began with a pop-up exhibition and innovative panel of swing dance pioneers at the Museum of the City of New York in 2016.
Dr. Derrick León Washington’s short curatorial & project film reel
Mr. Washington had the honor of curating and presenting new research, exhibition results, choreography, curriculum, expert oral and written statements, and a multimedia exhibition at international institutions, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Council of Europe. He also participated in conversations with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) colleagues working in Geneva and Paris.
Aspects of his multidisciplinary curriculum and curatorial modalities are taught globally by means of regional United Nations offices and various UN agencies.
He began at UN Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva and was promoted to a full-time position at the expert grade at UN Human Rights (OHCHR-NY) based at UN Headquarters in New York City. He created multidisciplinary content and research for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights about the use of relevant tangible and intangible cultural heritage that helps advance human rights and the UN Sustainable Development Goals while exploring ways the arts can empower communities.
Additionally, he has led and curated several UN projects, including a multinational arts/human rights webinar series, the development and moderation of the final plenary of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) 10th Anniversary Youth Forum 2021, United Nations International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples (2021), the first United Nations International Day for People of African Descent (2021), an ongoing multi-agency United Nations Art & Artifacts Collection project, dynamic UNHQ Visitor Services webisodes, and several UN films, including a short film about the ‘I Still Believe in Our City’ campaign sponsored by UN Human Rights (OHCHR) and the NYC Commission on Human Rights. The ongoing UN arts/human rights webinar series includes internationally exhibiting artists from Puerto Rico, Russia, Brazil, U.S.A., Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. His curatorial, artistic, artifact/object, and human-rights-focused projects at the UN have been featured extensively on UN TV, as well as UN, UN Human Rights, UNHQ Visitor Services, UN News Centre Chinese, UN Global, and UN Permanent Missions’ podcast, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook channels.
With Mr. Washington’s advanced project management skills and innovative curatorial frameworks that help spark social movements, he is able to organize exhibitions, programs/experiences, and multidisciplinary projects with local, national, and international organizations such as United Nations Headquarters, UNESCO, United Nations Human Rights (OHCHR), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Alvin Ailey Extension/Dance School, Institute of Jazz Studies, New-York Historical Society, City Parks Foundation’s SummerStage, National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Museum of the City of New York, Carnegie Hall, Latin Percussion, Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Spring/Break Art Fair (NYC), El Museo del Barrio, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, New York International Salsa Congress, Apollo Theater, Amnesty International Youth Activist College, City University of New York, New York University, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Rutgers University-Paul Robeson Galleries, New York City Department of Education, Texas School of the Blind and Visually Impaired, and the National Arts Club. Click (here) for a list of educational resources and portfolio.
-- Selected Exhibitions and Projects --
Museum of the City of New York (MCNY)
• Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor (April 2025–February 2026) – Curator
• Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York (June 2017–November 2017) – Curator
• New York at Its Core (2017–present; digital interactives currently on view) – Researcher & Content Expert for the JAY-Z, Emily Roebling & Elsie
Richardson digital interactives • Activist New York (2017–present; films currently on view) – Researcher on nuclear activism and director and storyboard writer of documentary films exploring immigration, gender equality, economic rights, civil rights, and environmental advocacy.
United Nations Human Rights (UN Headquarters)
• United Nations Human Rights Series (2019–2023) – Curator & Creator
• Human Rights, Art, and Protest – Curator
• Speaking Truth to Power: Religious or Belief Minority Artists – Curator • United Nations International Day of Indigenous Peoples - UN Art & Artifacts Collection (2021) – Curator
• United Nations International Day of People of African Descent - UN Art & Artifacts Collection (2021) – Curator
• I Still Believe in Our City – Public Art Initiative (2021) – United Nations Liaison
• United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum 10th Anniversary (2021) – UN Moderator & Communications Consultant
Smithsonian Institution, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Apollo Theater & Additional Institutions
• Community Exhibits & Public Programs (2011–2013) – Curator & Director, El Fogón Center for the Arts, NYC
• Will to Adorn exhibition, Smithsonian Folklife Festival (June 2013–July 2013) – Performance, Artist Panel & Curatorial Assistance, Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage
• From the Archives, feature-length documentary (2022) – Researcher & Curator, Apollo Theater • Urban Stomp: From Swing to Mambo (2018–present) – Curator & Project Director, multidisciplinary artmaking and programming presented at multiple venues including New York University, CUNY–John Jay College, Rutgers–Newark, Apollo Theater & Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
• You Should Be Dancing: New York, 1976 (2026) – Academic Advisor, New-York Historical Society