Kanitra Fletcher is associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic art at the National Gallery of Art. Since joining the museum in 2021, she has curated American Icon: The US Flag in Art (2026) and Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti (2024–2025).  

Fletcher was previously an associate curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she organized the US tour of Afro-Atlantic Histories (presented at the National Gallery in 2022) and oversaw the presentation of such major traveling exhibitions as Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power and Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017. She has presented and published articles on modern and contemporary art of the African Diaspora as it relates to gender, labor, body politics, the avant-garde, and self-representation. Since 2013, Fletcher has curated a video art series for Landmarks, the public art program of the University of Texas at Austin.  

Fletcher holds a PhD in history of art from Cornell University and an MA in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin.