Baltimore’s Reginald F. Lewis Museum president to retire in December

Terri Lee Freeman’s December retirement will open a leadership transition at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, one of Baltimore’s most visible anchors for Black history and culture. The museum said it will begin a national search for Freeman’s successor as it looks to preserve its mission while expanding its reach downtown and across the city.

Freeman joined the museum in December 2020 as executive director after five years leading the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. She was later named president in June 2023, a period that put her in charge during the COVID-19 pandemic and the broader national reckoning over racial injustice that followed George Floyd’s murder. For a museum built around the telling of Maryland’s Black history, that made her tenure about far more than internal administration.

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum opened in 2005 and sits at 830 East Pratt Street near the Inner Harbor. The 82,000-square-foot institution is the state’s largest museum devoted to African American history and is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. Its permanent collection spans 400 years of Maryland history and includes more than 11,000 objects, artifacts, documents and photographs, giving the next leader a major platform and a significant stewardship role in Baltimore’s cultural landscape.

Freeman’s departure will also coincide with the end of W. Drew Hawkins’ eight-year tenure as chair of the museum’s board of directors. That makes this a broader institutional handoff, not just a change at the top office. The museum has described the period as one of growth, resilience and expanded community impact, and the next president will be expected to carry that momentum forward while stabilizing operations.

The stakes are sharpened by the museum’s recent attendance and planning challenges. Local reporting cited 29,648 visitors for the year ending June 30, 2025, down from 104,500 in the museum’s first fiscal year. At the same time, the museum has been pushing a five-year strategic plan that calls for renovation of the permanent history exhibition, growth in visitorship, membership, funding support and community outreach. In 2025, the museum also said it had planted the seeds for a more child-friendly experience, with a planned children-centric space expected to open to the public in early 2026.

Freeman’s retirement leaves Baltimore with a bigger question than who will fill the job. The museum’s next president will help decide how one of the city’s most important cultural institutions presents Black history, builds audiences and strengthens its civic role in the years ahead.