Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian and curator. She is an associate of the W.E.B Du Bois Institute at the Hutchins Center, Harvard University. Born in Los Angeles, California, she has lived in the Washington DC area since 1979. After obtaining degrees from Georgetown University and Howard University, she married and had two children. After settling in suburban Virginia to raise her family she began to pursue her life long dream of becoming an art historian. In 2005 she earned her Ph.D. in the history of art from the University of Maryland. Her interests are in the relationship between race and representation in European and American art. She has written on diverse topics such as Henry O. Tanner in North Africa, Black bodies in Meissen Porcelain, and the prints of David C. Driskell and Margo Humphrey. She recently contributed an essay to Volume V of The Image of the Black in Western Art. As former curator at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland she curated many exhibitions including Her Story: Lithographs by Margo Humphrey; Arabesque: The Art of Stephanie Pogue; Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell and Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art. She is co-editor of Representing Blacks in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century a forthcoming volume of essays from Ashgate. Her current project is an exploration of blacks in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Body in European Decorative Arts. Childs is also designs jewelry and fine art scarves for her accessories company ZELDA Designs.