Dr. Richard Kurin is an American cultural anthropologist, museum manager and author. He is the Under Secretary for History, Art and Culture at the Smithsonian responsible for most the Smithsonian’s national museums as well as a variety of cultural and educational programs.
For two decades served as the Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage overseeing the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and other cultural educational programs. The Center’s productions have won Grammy, Academy, Emmy and Webby awards. Kurin also produced many of the Smithsonian’s major public programs on the National Mall, such as the Smithsonian’s Birthday Party on the Mall in 1996, the national World War II Reunion on the Mall and the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in 2004. He has also produced public programs for several Presidential Inaugurals, the Millennium, and the Atlanta Olympics. Among the strongest have been the Festival of India, along with the living “Aditi” exhibition in 1985, a program on Tibetan culture with the Dalai Lama in 2000, and the Silk Road with Yo-Yo Ma and 500 other artists from 28 countries in 2002. He first worked at the Smithsonian in 1976 and was awarded the Smithsonian Secretary's Gold Medal for Exceptional Service.
Kurin earned his B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in philosophy and anthropology, and his M.A. and Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He was a Fulbright-Hays doctoral fellow, He specializes in the study of India, Pakistan, cultural policy and museology.
Kurin taught at Southern Illinois University and The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. He has authored more than a hundred scholarly articles and chapters and given hundreds of presentations at universities and museums around the U.S. and across the globe. He was a keynote speaker at the International Council of Museums in 2004 and at Harvard's Peabody Museum in 2008.
He was appointed to the U.S. Commission for UNESCO by Secretary of State Colin Powell and reappointed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He helped draft the International Treaty for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage which has now been ratified by more than 120 nations. Kurin represents the Smithsonian on the boards of the White House Historical Association, the President’s Committee for the Arts and the Humanties, and others. He founded and organized the Haiti Cultural Recovery Project to help save that nation’s heritage after the devasting 2010 earthquake.
Kurin serves on the Visiting Committee of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and the Dean’s Advisory Council at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Kurin, as the PTA President of Bailey's Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences in the early 1990s had helped establish the first Magnet program in the Fairfax County Public Schools.