By Fern Gillespie
When New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Laurie Cumbo was growing up in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush, arts and culture were a family affair in her home. Before she was born, her mother, Beverly, worked at Lincoln Center as a tour guide.
Later, she would watch her mother perform as an actor in operas like Aida and La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera. “My mom would take me to art classes at Pratt Institute.
I also went to Kingsborough Community College for art classes,” she told Our Time Press. Her father, Wilkins, was a jazz aficionado. “He loved taking me to nightclubs and to jazz performances,” she said. “He would take me every year to the International African Arts Festival at Boys and Girls High School. I did a lot of great things that I enjoyed in terms of art exposure in Brooklyn and beyond.”
Then, as a 15-year-old student at Brooklyn Technical High School, she received an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “That opportunity and exposure changed my life. I knew from working there as an intern that this was in fact what I wanted to do.
Fast forward to now. I am the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City from the exposure of that one internship,” she said. The Met’s magic continued for her at the 2022 Met Gala when her boyfriend, Bobby Digi Olisa, gallantly proposed on the museum’s famed steps.
“I think that all of the different pieces of my life have completely prepared me for this opportunity,” said Cumbo, who holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Spelman College and a master’s in visual arts administration from New York University.
Her career has also spanned working at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Museum, serving on the New York City Council, and founding MoCADA: The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.
For fiscal year 2025, Cumbo has secured a record $254 million budget and restored $53 million in cuts to cultural funding. Her impact has been seen in New York City communities that have been systemically underfunded and underserved. Communities like the Bronx, where the City is developing the first Hip Hop Museum, the first Bronx children’s museum, and conducted major renovations to the Bronx Museum of Art.
In Queens, there have been substantial resources to the Louis Armstrong House to bring a state-of-the-art museum and historical site to the beautiful residential community.
For Harlem, capital dollars were put into the National Black Theater, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Apollo. In Brooklyn, investments have helped save Magnolia Tree Earth Center, build a new home for 651 Arts and assist MoCADA and Billie Holiday Theatre. For Staten Island, the African American Sandy Ground Historical Society site.
Manhattan has seen the re-opening of LaMaMa Theater; capital is invested into Nuyorican Poets Café and a state-of-the-art theatre space for People’s Theatre Project in Washington Heights.
“It’s really been a time of investment in communities that have been underserved for generations. They are seeing for the first time opportunities for investment, resources, and to have their culture elevated at a very high level,” said Cumbo. “So, that they have world-class, state-of-the-art equipment, theater, and sound systems for world-class stages. That’s so vital when you’re presenting art and culture that it has a world-class state-of-the-art space.”
For cultural organizations, remaining in communities can be a challenge. NYC Create in Place, established by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, provides technical assistance and support to cultural and creative organizations that are facing long-term or acute challenges like legal, financial, or housing.
“It’s exposing our organizations to opportunities in the City of New York that will assist help and support their organizations not only to sustain but to thrive,” she said. “We want organizations to come to us to be able to in order to have those resources in place in order to assist them.”
“Economically, cultural institutions are great drivers for the economy. Tourism is critical to New York City’s economy on so many levels. It attracts people to New York City, and then people go and support our restaurants, shopping and retail,” said Cumbo.
“So if neighborhoods really want to thrive, it’s critical that they have a cultural institution there that’s constantly and consistently bringing audience there. So, it can also spill out into the community and it can create an economic flow.”
To make cultural activities available to low-income New Yorkers, there is the Culture Pass through the NYC Public Library, IDNYC Card, and the Cool Culture website. In addition, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs has created a cool collaboration.
“We are also going to be announcing a program with the American Museum of Natural History where people with EBT cards are going to be able to visit the museum for free, as well as to visit the special exhibitions for free,” said Cumbo. “We are constantly coming up with different programs to be able to experience and see New York City in an affordable way.”
Cumbo is part of a new cultural leadership of Black executives heading major mainstream arts institutions. “It’s something that we’ve never seen before,” she said.
These cultural leaders include Dr. Sean Decatur at the American Museum of Natural History; Gina Duncan at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM); Atiba Edwards at Brooklyn Children’s Museum; Wes Jackson at BRIC; and Rasu Jilani at Brooklyn Arts Council.
Like her parents, Cumbo is instilling the love of arts in her six-year-old son Prince Noah. “One of the many benefits is that my son is able to accompany me to a lot of events. He’s become quite popular himself and now they want him to participate.
The press want him to talk about different exhibitions and programs,” she said. “He loves to participate. The most fun part is us doing it together. He calls himself the junior commissioner!”