Sana Musasama received her BA from City College of New York in 1973 and her MFA from Alfred University, New York in 1988. She was awarded the 2022 Life Honorary Membership Award and the 2018 Outstanding Achievement Award from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) for her years of teaching and her humanitarian work with victims of sex trafficking in Cambodia and the United States.
Musasama is the coordinator of the Apron Project, a sustainable entrepreneurial project for girls and young women reintegrated back into society after being forced into sex trafficking. In 2016, she was a guest speaker on “Activism through Art” at ROCA. An article by Cliff Hocker, “If I can Help Somebody: Sana Musasama’s Art of Healing” appears in the International Review of African American Art.
Musasama has received numerous grants and awards including ACLU of Michigan Art Prize 7 and Art Prize 8 in 2015 and 2016 respectively, an Anonymous Was a Woman Award in 2002, and in 2001, she was featured in the 2001 Florence Biennial.
Her work is in multiple collections such as The Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC), The Museum of Art and Design (New York) the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (New York), the Hood Museum of Art (Hanover, NH), The Studio Museum (Harlem, NY), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Harlem, NY), Bluffton University (Bluffton, OH), and in numerous private collections. In 2015, the Museum of Art and Design in New York selected four works from The Unspeakable Series for their private collection. Musasama lives and works in New York.