Photo credit: Jessica Alexander
The third edition of Why Black Museums, “Other Geographies, New Humanities,” meditates on the practices and legacies of Black museum work and its ideas about place and migration. As varied thinkers have followed the roots and routes of Black cultures across the globe, their work has encouraged reassessments of the humanities’ long-tacit focus on a singular, unified, and European-originated culture and history. Re-envisioning the assumed centers and boundaries within North American humanities scholarship, Black museums have helped recover understudied historical sites, intellectual lineages, and artistic milieus—spurring new geographical imaginaries and modes of inquiry. At this year’s Why Black Museums, convening artists, archivists, and curators will discuss their work and the relationships they see among geographies, museums, and material culture.
The audience is invited to join the moderators and presenters beginning at 10 a.m. for a coffee reception. We invite artists, scholars, museum professionals, students, and community members to gather with us in appreciation of these incredible speakers and cultural spaces and to look forward to these integral institutions’ future innovations.
Acknowledging the promise of accessibility and sustainability, this event is offered in a hybrid format, for those interested in participating from near and far. Those participating virtually may find the event livestream on the AGBS website.
Why Black Museums: “Other Geographies, New Fields”
at Harry Ransom Center Prothro Theatre
Day One: Thursday, November 6
4:00 - 5:15 pm: Keynote lecture by Carla Williams
Photographer, archivist and writer Carla Williams gives the evening keynote, followed by a discussion with Dr. Erina Duganne
Day Two: Friday, November 7
10 - 10:30 am: Coffee reception
10:30 - 12 pm: Presentations & Moderated Discussion:
Featuring Lava Thomas and Dale Brockman Davis, followed by a moderated conversation with Dr. Delphine Sims
12 - 12:45 pm: Lunch provided
12:45 - 2:15 pm: Presentations & Moderated Discussion:
Featuring Dr. Mora Beauchamp-Byrd and Dr. Jordana Saggese, followed by a moderated conversation with Dr. Gaila Sims
Free and Open to the Public
About Why Black Museums
Why Black Museums was conceptualized by Dr. Cherise Smith, Executive Director of Art Galleries at Black Studies, Dr. Gaila Sims, and Dr. Delphine Sims. This multiyear initiative was conceived to honor and examine Black museums’ contributions to the museum field, and to celebrate AGBS as a promising addition to the larger community of ethnically specific museums.
About the Participants
Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Art History and Director of Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies (MCHS) at Florida State University. An art historian, arts administrator and curator, she has published widely on the art and visual culture of the African diaspora, on global modern and contemporary art, and on representations of race, class, and gender in American comics. She holds a B.A. in Art History and an M.A. in Visual Arts Administration from New York University, an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Art History from Duke University. Her writings have appeared in Burlington Contemporary; Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture; The Journal of Global Slavery; The Oxford African American Studies Center; and ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America. Her numerous curatorial projects include Little Nemo’s Progress: Animation and Contemporary Art (2019) and Transforming the Crown: African, Asian, and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966-1996 (presented 1997-98 at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Caribbean Cultural Center, and The Studio Museum in Harlem). She is currently completing a manuscript focused on late 20th-century appropriations of William Hogarth’s graphic narratives by Lubaina Himid, David Hockney, Paula Rego and others.
Dale Brockman Davis is an artist, teacher, community activist and gallery owner, whose skills have led him to explore Sculpture, Ceramics, Jewelry Design, and Assemblage. He has taught these disciplines to secondary students with LAUSD. Mr. Davis was the co-founder/director of Brockman Gallery in Leimert Park area of Los Angeles, CA. He is an active artist who has had numerous exhibits and contemporary art forum exposures, and whose work is in many private and personal collections. Mr. Davis believes that all people should cultivate an awareness of art in their immediate environment and community at large. This awareness in young people is essential and vital to their perception and conception of themselves and their world.
Mr. Davis has been recognized by the City of Los Angeles and the State of California for his outstanding cultural contributions, and his work has appeared in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum, the California African American Museum, Los Angeles City Hall, and the Watts Tower Art Center.
Erina Duganne is Professor of Art History at Texas State University. Her research and writing focus mostly on contemporary art and its intersection with artist activism and solidarity practices, intersectional feminisms, documentary practices, and race. She is author of The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American Photography (2010), co-author of Global Photography: A Critical History (2020), and co-editor of Cold War Camera (2023). She served as co-curator for Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (2006), Northern Triangle (2014), and Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities (2022), and as curator for Crossing Borders with Susan Meiselas and Borderland Collective (2024). Duganne’s forthcoming projects include Dreams of a Continent: Artists Call’s Transnational Solidarity with Central America, supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships, co-edited with Genevieve Hyacinthe and Susan Richmond. She is editor of the Americas for the journal Photography & Culture and co-editor for the book series Feminist Art Histories with Rutgers University Press.
Dr. Jordana Moore Saggese (sah-jay-zay) is a leading scholar in modern and contemporary American art, with a particular emphasis on the critical expressions of Blackness in visual culture. She is a Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and serves as the Director of The David C. Driskell Center, a premier institution dedicated to the study of African American art. Prior to this, she was Editor-in-Chief of Art Journal, one of the most influential scholarly publications in the field.
Trained as an art historian, Saggese’s research engages deeply with the intersections of race, identity, and artistic production. She is internationally recognized as a foremost expert on Jean-Michel Basquiat, having authored two landmark books on the artist: Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art (University of California Press, 2014), which received the PEN Center Award for Exceptional First Book, and The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses (University of California Press, 2021), a comprehensive compilation of primary and critical texts on Basquiat’s work. Her scholarship has been widely cited in both academic and curatorial contexts, shaping contemporary understandings of Basquiat’s artistic legacy and the broader cultural significance of Black artists in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Beyond her work on Basquiat, Saggese’s research extends to broader examinations of Black visual culture, particularly in relation to performance, photography, and the intersections of art and sport. She has published essays in Art Journal, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, Flash Art, b.O.s. (Black One Shot), and International Review of African American Art, among others.
Dr. Delphine Sims is an Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She completed her PhD in the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley with a focus on Blackness and American landscape photography. For her dissertation research Delphine was awarded predoctoral fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts within the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She previously held curatorial roles within the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. In addition to exhibition catalogs, her writing can be found in Aperture, Matte magazine, and the Believer.
Dr. Gaila Sims is a public historian and museum educator specializing in African American history. Originally from Riverside, California, she received her BA in History and African American Studies from Oberlin College and her MA and PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Sims has held positions at several museums, archives, and cultural institutions, including the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Fredericksburg Area Museum in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Lava Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is grounded in an ethos of social justice. Her work has been exhibited at leading institutions across the country, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Harvard University, the Museum of the African Diaspora, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University, among others.
Thomas has received numerous accolades, including an Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors, a San Francisco Artadia Award, a KALA Art Institute’s Master Artist Award, and most recently an honorary doctorate from the California College of the Arts. She was named a YBCA100 Honoree and was recognized as one of the “Women to Watch” by the San Francisco Advocacy for the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She has been awarded artist residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Center for the Arts. Thomas is represented by Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
Carla Williams is a photographer, archivist, editor, and writer born and raised in Los Angeles. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of New Mexico, she is the author of two histories of photography including The Black Female Body: A Photographic History with Deborah Willis. Her first monograph, Tender, was published in 2023 by TBW Books and received the Aperture/Paris Photo First PhotoBook Award. Williams is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. She exhibits with Higher Pictures in New York and lives in New Orleans.