Njideka Akunyili Crosby

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Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Nigerian, born 1983

BiographyBorn in Enugu, Nigeria in 1983 Njideka Akunyili Crosby was raised by
her mother Dora Akunyili, a well-known pharmacist and Director of
Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and
Control (NAFDAC). At 16, she moved to the United States to pursue art
education. She attended the United World College of the Atlantic in
Wales before moving to Philadelphia, where she studied biology and
studio artat Swarthmore College. Inspired by her mother, she Initially
pursued a career in medicine. However, Crosby’s passion for art
emerged as a professional priority and prompted her enrollment in the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and, subsequently, the
Yale University School of Art, where she earned an MFA.
Crosby is well known for combining painting with photographic
transfers. Her technique involves rich layering of Nigerian and West
African symbols, figures, and archival materials, which, in turn, reveals
the many cross influences that shape and inform her creative practice.
Crosby has enjoyed remarkable success, with solo exhibitions at wellknown
institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and
the National Portrait Gallery in London. Crosby is also the recipient of
numerous prestigious awards, including a MacArthur Genius Award
recognizing her contributions to forming compound narratives in art
and contemporary art. She is also the recipient of the 2020 Carnegie
Corporation “Great Immigrant, Great American” Award; the 2019
African Art Award; the 2016 Prix Canson Prize; the 2015 Foreign
Policy’s Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2015 Prize; the 2015 Next
Generation Prize, New Museum of Contemporary Art; the 2015 Joyce
Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and the 2014 Smithsonian American Art
Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize.
Crosby’s art is held in several prominent museums, including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the
Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The
National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(SFMOMA), among others. Crosby currently resides in Los Angeles,
California and is represented by David Zwirner Art Gallery.

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