Asmaa Walton

Asmaa Walton is an art educator and founder of the Black Art Library, a collection of resources about Black visual artists.

Early life and education Walton grew up in Detroit. Although she frequently spent time in the Detroit Institute of Arts, she lacked arts education in school. She attended a culinary school before enrolling at Michigan State University. After graduating with a BFA in art education, she then completed a master's degree in arts politics from New York University. She was the KeyBank Diversity Leadership Fellow at the Toledo Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum’s 2019-2020 Romare Bearden Graduate Museum Fellow. She eventually collected over 200 resources. Walton created the online project for people seeking to know more about Black art, which is often excluded from the permanent collections of museums: "I really wanted to create a resource for our education. I wanted Black people to be able to use this resource and find an interest in art, or to do research, or just sit down and learn some things they might have already known but learn some new information about it."

In 2021, Walton collaborated with Bottega Veneta, the Italian luxury fashion house, on a Black Art Library display at a pop-up store in Detroit. Walton was also named as a contributor to the Shepherd, a new arts complex in Detroit. A version of the Black Art Library at the Shepherd will be called the East Village Arts Library.