Curatorial Projects
In addition to being an visual artist and researcher, I am also interested in curation and have curated, co-curated and served as a member of a curatorial team for several exhibitions. Below are some of my past and current curatorial projects.
Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America
March 23, 2023 - October 8, 2023, African American Museum in Philadelphia In Collaboration with
The Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts
The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) present a multi-venue exhibition of new works examining the provocative and timely question: “Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy?” The exhibition includes Installations by 20 celebrated artists explore themes of equality, free speech, and other tenets of democracy.
The exhibition title is inspired by the profound words of Benjamin Franklin and poetic lyrics from James Weldon Johnson. Franklin pondered whether the sun was rising or setting on the country’s future during its formative years, and Johnson encouraged us to face “the rising sun of our new day begun” in his lyrics from Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, also known as the Black National Anthem.
Gifts Permanent Exhibition
Bhunga Building
Nelson Mandela Museum
Mthatha, South Africa
During my Museum fellowship with the Nelson Mandela Museum, I was responsible for curating and designing part of their permanent exhibition space for their new Bhunga Building in the city of Mthatha. The 10 room exhibition space contained over 100 objects focusing on the gifts and awards Mandela received throughout this life.
American Appetites
April 24 - May 3, 2015,
Eli and Edythe Broad Museum
Michigan State University
Curated by students in Michigan State University's Museum Studies Program, American Appetite: Transforming Food Culture takes a multi-themed approach to analyze how American food culture and consumption has transformed in the past hundred years. Food is more than simply a key to one's heart, but a means to unlock the many ways a society engages and critiques issues of politics, gender, race, class, and commerce. Whether seen as a symbol of wealth and tradition or as a metaphor of power, food is constantly changing and shaping the way Americans view culture and construct identities. This exhibition contains over 18 objects from the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, the MSU Library Special Collections, and the MSU Museum, including photography from the Works Progress Administration and historical objects from Michigan companies such as Kellogg and Michigan Stove Company of Detroit.
American Appetites Cont’d
This is a sample of one of the selected works and the extended text label written for it.
Lorna Simpson (American, 1960)
Untitled, 1993
Glass, photograph on linen, etched glass
MSU, purchase, funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies 95.2.A-D
“What happens to a dream deferred?”
The lucky break of a wishbone in our collective memories symbolizes the granting of a wish or fulfillment of a dream. However, as poet Langston Hughes raises the question of what happens to dreams that go unfulfilled, contemporary artist Lorna Simpson uses glass, photography, and text to pose a similar question.
The consumption of food, represented by the glass wishbones, transform into a meditation on the fragility of hopes, wishes and dreams, and the possible hopelessness of never truly receiving what is wished for. Can we ever be truly satisfied if we get what we think we want?
Simpson is known for using photo-text and video to explore American racialized modes of representation and gender. Black women are typically central figures in her work, though Untitled represents some of Simpson’s non-figurative works that use fabricated and found objects to explore tradition, folklore, politics and power.
Jeannette Ehlers Rise
April 16 - July 16, 2016,
McKenna Museum of African American Art
New Orleans, LA
Jeannette Ehlers: Raise at The George and Leah McKenna Museum for African American Art in New Orleans will be the first solo exhibition of the Danish-Trinidadian artist’s work in the United States. Ehlers’ artistic practice is driven by an impetus to combat a cultural amnesia regarding the legacy of European colonialism, and specifically highlights Denmark’s role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Alongside an exhibition that will include recent video and sculptural works, Ehlers will produce several new performances conceived during her one-month residency in New Orleans. Underpinning Ehlers’ live works are considerations of race, nationalism, cultural expectation, and colonial violence. All of the performances will invite the participation and engagement of the black residents of New Orleans.
Addressing divergent mechanisms for coping with racism, Ehlers’ works raise questions about the pervasive racial and social structures of many nations. Members of the African Diaspora are forced to constantly formulate a personal relationship to a global historical wound – the colonization of Africa. Furthermore, the presentation of Ehlers’ work in New Orleans links Denmark, the United States, and the Caribbean on the eve of the one hundred year anniversary of ‘Transfer Day’, the sale of what became the US Virgin Islands from Denmark to the United States in 1917. The sale of what was formerly known as the Danish West Indies allowed Denmark to effectively erase the country’s role in the slave trade. By re-animating this forgotten history in New Orleans, Ehlers hopes to also call attention on the legacy of colonialism, and the ongoing resistance to anti-black oppression in the United States and beyond.
