Nwaka Onwusa

Nwaka Onwusa is a music historian and curator who builds exhibitions around storytelling. She served as Chief Curator and Vice President of Curatorial Affairs at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the first Black woman to hold the post. She joined the Rock Hall in 2019 as director of curatorial affairs after about ten years at the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles, where she began her career as an educator and rose to curator.

Her Rock Hall exhibits include It's Been Said All Along: Voices of Rage, Hope, and Empowerment, which opened in June 2020 as the museum's first pairing of a traditional exhibit with a full virtual experience and won the Ohio Museums Association's award for Best Exhibition of 2020, along with Legends of Rock and Woodstock at 50. At the GRAMMY Museum she created All Eyez on Me: The Writings of Tupac Shakur, Jenni Rivera: La Gran Señora and Ringo: Peace and Love, and developed The Music of the Civil Rights Movement, introduced at the White House in 2010. She also curated Tupac: Wake Me When I'm Free with the Shakur estate.

Her exhibits have reached audiences across the United States, in the UK and online. She is a graduate of UC Riverside.