Join us for day two of the In Common: Romare Bearden and New Approaches to Art, Race & Economy Symposium focused on the artist through the lens of activism. This will be a full day of thought provoking programming panels, keynotes, and performances. 

PROGRAM

_9:00AM

Doors Open/Light Pastry and Beverage Service

_{10:00 am - 11:00 am}
Opening Plenary: The Artist as Activist

Mary Schmidt Campbell will examine the role of Bearden and his late 20th century BIPOC contemporaries in advocating for notions of racial and economic justice in their day and will reflect on the current imperatives facing BIPOC artists and creatives. Mary Schmidt Campbell is Romare Bearden scholar and former president of Spelman College, she will be introduced by Johanne Bryant-Reid, Co-Director, Romare Bearden Foundation.

_{11:00 am – 12:15 pm}
Conversation: The Case for a More Engaged Creative Community 

Professors Dwight Andrews and Robert G. O’Meally will discuss the reasons why art and inclusion matter. Among related topics, they will discuss Bearden and his contemporaries, the role they played in challenging themselves and other artists to address the issues of their day bearing on equality, and the special role that jazz has played in providing a window into new possibilities for human expression and relations.

Dwight Andrews is a composer & professor of Jazz Studies at Emory University and Robert G. O’Meally is Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Columbia University, they will be introduced by Diedra Harris-Kelley, Co-Director Romare Bearden Foundation.

_{12:30 pm – 2:00 pm}
Lunch Keynote: Multiculturalism, Activism, and Art

Renowned poet and public intellectual Natalie Diaz will offer prepared remarks on next generation opportunities to advance multiculturalism and activism through writing, spoken word, and other forms of creative expression and community building. Natalie Diaz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author (Postcolonial Love Poem et al), MacArthur Fellow, and Senior Fellow, Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy. She will be introduced by Yvonne Watson, Interim Executive Dean, Parsons School of Design.

_{2:15 pm – 3:30 pm}
Panel: Artists as Champions of Racial and Economic Reform

This session will examine the role of BIPOC artists and cultural institutions in advancing and lifting up new strategies and initiatives that promote racial justice and economic reform, including public and private policy, practice, and investment bearing on multicultural arts and opportunities for community development, liberation, and expression.

Panelists will include Nicole Fleetwood, Scholar and Curator, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration; Angie Kim, President, Center for Cultural Innovation; fayemi shakur, Director of Arts and Culture, City of Newark, NJ; and Dr. H. Sharif Williams, Ph.D., Professor of Africana Studies, Documentary Filmmaking and Poetics, Goddard College. The session will be moderated by Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Executive Director, Ashé Cultural Center.

_{3:45 pm - 5:00 pm}
Panel: New Opportunities for BIPOC Leadership in Creative Culture & Economy

This session will examine emerging opportunities for BIPOC leaders to shape the future of creative culture and economy through innovation, new voices and perspectives, and enhanced investments in multicultural arts and community building. Panelists will identify spaces and ways in which BIPOC leaders are changing the conversation and the content produced and financed by large arts institutions and their benefactors, government agencies, private investors, and the major media, and will assess the impacts of this trajectory on local economies, civic culture, and communities of color.

Panelist will include Eddie Torres, President, Grantmakers in the Arts; Calvin Williams, Senior Advisor, Social Impact & Advocacy, Think Common Entertainment; Aisha Benson, President, Nonprofit Finance Fund; Adrienne Edwards, Director of Curatorial Affairs, The Whitney Museum of American Art and moderated by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Senior Program Officer, Creativity and Free Expression, Ford Foundation.

_{6:00 pm –7:25 pm}

Performance @ The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery

Layer Time: The Past is Already Rearranged by Our Gaze

Following the panels and keynotes there will be an exhibition viewing and performance at the Kellen Gallery introduced by Eriola Pira, Curator, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School. Black Quantum Futurism's performative lecture explores the confluence of Romare Bearden's collage artistry, black spatial agency, temporal autonomy, and quantum physics within the exhibition. Ungluing Bearden's layered and complex narrative of African American life and human existence, they draw parallels between collaging and quantum superposition, delving into how Bearden’s collages encapsulate a continuum of temporal experiences. Reception with hors d'oeuvres, refreshments. 

_{7:25 pm - 7:30 pm}
Brief Closing Remarks, Preview of Day 3 Agenda and Logistics

This event is FREE but pre-registration is required to join.

This event is part of a series. View series here.