Fellow Spotlight: Kelly Richman-Abdou

Introducing Kelly Richman-Abdou, Research Fellow for the Charles Rumph Photography Collection.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m an art historian, educator, and writer with a long-standing love of both making and studying art. My work centers on 20th-century American photography and painting, bringing together research, exhibitions, and writing to make art history engaging and accessible to broad audiences. 

I hold a BA in Art History/Arts Management with a minor in Fine Arts from the University of San Francisco—where I was born and raised—as well as an MA in Art and Museum Studies from Georgetown University and a PhD in Art History from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. I’m also the mom of two little girls (who you’ve probably seen holding hands and wandering around the museum!)

What brought you to museum work/the Phillips/the arts?

I’ve been making art for as long as I can remember; my entire childhood, I was certain I would become an artist! As I got older, my curiosity expanded beyond creating to the ideas behind art. I decided to major in art history in college, where I quickly discovered my love of research and my desire to become a museum curator. After graduating, I moved to DC to attend Georgetown and completed three internships at The Phillips Collection in just one year: two in the Curatorial department with Sue Frank and one in the Director’s Office under Dorothy Kosinski. 

After earning my MA, I moved to London and then to Paris before moving back to DC in 2021. The following year, I returned to the Phillips—this time as an Educator—and have been in Curatorial since January of this year. It has been wonderful to be back—and back again!

What have you been working on / what will you be working on?

As the Research Fellow for the Charles Rumph Photography Collection, I’m diving deep into the life and work of Charles Rumph—a remarkable local photographer who specialized in abstractions of architecture and nature—to develop research and curatorial work that will culminate in a meaningful and intimate exhibition. My work includes cataloguing and curating a major gift of Rumph’s photographs and personal archival materials, collaborating across departments, and contributing interpretive writing for this special project.

This project is truly “special” in every sense. Rumph is deeply rooted in the Phillips’s history: we gave him his first museum exhibition, Chambers, in 1980! While he studied in San Francisco under the legendary Peter Stackpole, his influences also remain closely tied to the Phillips: he was inspired by the modern works emerging from Stieglitz’s circle, which Duncan Phillips championed, and he took cues from Georgia O’Keeffe, whose work the Phillips was the first museum to acquire. Rumph’s unconventional journey—from prodigious big-band conductor to successful lawyer to devoted photographer—also reflects one of my favorite Duncan Phillips quotes: “Consistency from youth to middle age is at best a stiff-necked virtue.” Ultimately, Rumph’s vision and spirit align closely with the Phillips legacy, and this exhibition will celebrate that connection.