Dietra Montague • Director of Aesthetics and Creative Services – An independent artist who has lived and studied the arts and crafts of North and West Africa, Central and South America, Mexico and Europe. Her passion was ignited as she began traveling in her late teens, first to Mexico where she visited all the finest arts and crafts centers, and then to Morocco where she lived and worked for two and one-half years, studying a wide diversity of subjects from gem identification to jewelry construction and weaving. Later in her travels, she studied bead technique, jewelry designing, basket weaving and textiles, and also traveled to Egypt, where she spent three months studying the music, art, dance, language, and customs of that country.
Ms. Montague’s altars have been installed in exhibits at the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, and at the Smithsonian Museums of African Art and American History and the Smithsonian’s Center for African-American Studies. She is also a recipient of a number of individual fellowship awards from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She is the Mother of a son, Aton, and grandmother of two.