©Christa Holka, 2022
Renée Mussai is an independent curator, writer and scholar of visual culture with a special interest in Black feminist & intersectional practices. For more than two decades, she was senior curator and head of collection & curatorial at arts charity Autograph, where she organised numerous critically acclaimed public programmes of exhibitions, commissions and publications. Between 2022 – 23, she acted as artistic director of The Walther Collection, supporting the foundation’s publication, acquisition and exhibition programmes. She is currently senior research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg, SA; guest curator at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA; lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London and serves as chair of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation’s advisory council, amongst other academic and institutional affiliations. Her most recent publications include Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain (2025), the forthcoming sole-authored 'Eyes That Commit – A Visual Gathering’ (2026), alongside past award-winning artist monographs. Mussai curates, lectures and publishes internationally on visual and curatorial activism. In 2025, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts in recognition of her sustained curatorship – and scholarship in photography and lens-based media.