Darnell Lisby - Fashion Curator, Cleveland Museum of Art

Darnell Lisby is the Cleveland Museum of Art’s first curator of fashion. His latest claim to fame is creating the blockbuster exhibition “Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses” which ran between 2025-26.

Darnell professional background includes serving as a fashion historian and education coordinator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum where he was the sole fashion historian on the curatorial team for the Willi Smith: Street Couture exhibition. He also served in this capacity at various New York City spaces including the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. 

Other credits: The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion and curated the exhibitions Egyptomania: Fashion’s Conflicted Obsession and Korean Couture: Generations of Revolution. 

Broadly speaking, he says he enjoys examining the intersection of Blackness and the history of fashion from the 1800’s to the present.