“Vision & Justice” is a two-day creative convening (April 25–26, 2019) that will consider the role of the arts in understanding the nexus of art, race, and justice.
#visionandjustice
Vision & Justice: A Civic Curriculum
This public event, conceived by Sarah Lewis, an assistant professor of history of art and architecture and of African and African American studies at Harvard University, grows out of the award-winning "Vision & Justice" issue of the photography journal Aperture (May 2016), which she guest edited. The convening is organized around three guiding questions: How is the foundational right of representation in a democracy—the right to be recognized justly—tied to the work of images in the public realm? What is the role of the arts for justice? How have narratives created by culture—the arts, performances, and images—both limited and liberated our definition of national belonging in this digital age?
Cover of the Vision & Justice issue of the photography journal Aperture (May 2016) courtesy of Aperture. Photo: Richard Avedon. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader, with his father, Martin Luther King, Baptist minister, and his son, Martin Luther King III, Atlanta, Georgia, March 22, 1963 (C) The Richard Avedon Foundation
The convening takes its conceptual inspiration from Frederick Douglass’s landmark Civil War speech “Pictures and Progress,” about the transformative power of pictures to create a new vision for the nation. In this long-understudied speech, Douglass described a vision of race, citizenship, and image making that he stated might take a century or more to be understood. This “Vision & Justice” convening will focus on both the historic roots and contemporary realities of visual literacy for justice in American—and particularly African American—civic life.
The program will emphasize short presentations with the goal of outlining and catalyzing ideas for future work in art and justice around the country and the world. The sessions will focus on a wide variety of related topics, from “Race, Justice, and the Environment” to “Cultural Narratives and Media.” The program incorporates a range of dynamic speakers and events, including a performance by Carrie Mae Weems; a conversation about Central Park Five, the forthcoming miniseries by Ava DuVernay and Bradford Young, with Henry Louis Gates Jr.; and a performance by Wynton Marsalis. Mona Hanna-Attisha, who discovered the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, will exchange ideas with Chelsea Clinton, and LaToya Ruby Frazier, who used her camera to highlight the injustice on the ground, will show one of her videos. The event culminates on Thursday with the conferral of the inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation Essay Prize and a keynote by the social justice activist Bryan Stevenson on Friday evening.
“Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection” opens at the Hutchins Center’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art in tandem with the convening. A public reception takes place on April 26, and the exhibition runs through July 19, 2019.
This public-facing event will convene a large group of prominent activists, academics, artists, and public servants. The event will be streamed live and recorded for later posting online as part of the Radcliffe Institute’s commitment to bringing its programming to audiences around the world.
The event is hosted by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, with additional major funding from the Ford Foundation, and is cosponsored by the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Harvard Art Museums, and the American Repertory Theater.
#visionandjustice
Advisory Committee
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University
Lori Gross, associate provost for arts and culture, Harvard University
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Elizabeth Hinton, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department History and the Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Robin Kelsey, dean of arts and humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Harvard University
Carrie Lambert-Beatty, professor of visual and environmental studies and of history of art and architecture in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of graduate studies in film and visual studies in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Sarah Lewis, assistant professor of history of art and architecture and African and African-American studies, Harvard University
Yukio Lippit, professor of history of art and architecture, director of undergraduate studies in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Harvard College Professor, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Jennifer L. Roberts, Johnson-Kulukundis Family Faculty Director of the Arts at the Radcliffe Institute and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Damian Woetzel, president, the Juilliard School
Schedule
Information is accurate as of April 17, 2019. There may be adjustments to this schedule, so please consult this page for the most current information.
Thursday, April 25
OPENING PROGRAM: Knafel Center, Radcliffe Institute
1:00 – Welcome Remarks: Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Introduction: Sarah Lewis
Amanda Gorman, video
Gordon Parks Foundation Essay Prize Presentations:
Dean Robin Kelsey
Martha Tedeschi
Kasseem Dean (Swizz Beatz)
Remarks about the Parks Foundation: Peter Kunhardt Jr.
1:45 – Citizenship and Racial Narratives
Alexandra Bell, Jelani Cobb, Nicole Fleetwood, and Makeda Best
Khalil Gibran Muhammad tribute to Jamel Shabazz
Leigh Raiford tribute to Dawoud Bey
3:00 – Break
3:15 – Reading: Elsa Hardy
Introduction: David Adjaye
3:30 – Originality and Invention
Carrie Mae Weems, David Adjaye, and Sarah Lewis
4:30 – Performance: Vijay Iyer
Performance: Carrie Mae Weems, Grace Notes: Reflections for Now
Commissioned to commemorate the Emanuel 9
Concluding Remarks: Dean Lawrence D. Bobo
5:30 – End of program
Friday, April 26
MORNING SESSION: Sanders Theatre
9:00 – Welcome Remarks: Provost Alan M. Garber
Darren Walker
Performance: Musical Opening by Wynton Marsalis
Cultural Citizenship
Wynton Marsalis, Diane Paulus, and President Emerita Drew Gilpin Faust
Race, Culture, and Civic Space
Introduction: Dean Mohsen Mostafavi
David Adjaye, Theaster Gates, and Sarah Lewis
10:45 – Break
11:00 – Teju Cole tribute to LaToya Ruby Frazier
Race, Justice, and the Environment
Focus: Discovering the Flint crisis
LaToya Ruby Frazier video
Chelsea Clinton and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha
Race, Childhood, and Inequality in the Political Realm
Introduction: Dean Claudine Gay
Robin Bernstein and Naomi Wadler
12:30-1:45 – Lunch Break
AFTERNOON SESSION: Sanders Theatre
2:00 – Hank Willis Thomas interviewed by Cheryl Finley
Turnaround Arts [White House Program]
Kimberly Drew, Damian Woetzel, and Melody Barnes
3:15 – Break
3:30 – Race, Technology and Algorithmic Bias
Joy Buolamwini, Latanya Sweeney, and Darren Walker
Mass Incarceration and Visual Narratives
Introduction: Tommie Shelby
Bryan Stevenson, Elizabeth Hinton, and Danielle Allen
5:00 – Concluding Remarks: Vincent Brown
6:00 – Public Reception in the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, Hutchins Center
“Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection”
Maurice Berger, consulting curator of the exhibition, will be available in the gallery for one-on-one "talk backs" with guests.
EVENING SESSION: Sanders Theatre
7:30 – Introductions
Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin
President Lawrence S. Bacow
Sarah Lewis
Vision & Justice Award tributes:
Sadie Rain Hope-Gund and Catherine Gund tribute to Agnes Gund
Hank Willis Thomas tribute to Deborah Willis
Franklin Leonard tribute to Ava DuVernay
Discussion of When They See Us, a series on the Central Park 5
Ava DuVernay and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
9:00 – Keynote Introduction: Elizabeth Alexander
Closing Keynote: Bryan Stevenson
Conference Close: Sarah Lewis
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Participants
David Adjaye, architect and principal, Adjaye Associates
Elizabeth Alexander, poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and arts activist; chancellor, Academy of American Poets; president, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
Lawrence S. Bacow, president, Harvard University
Melody C. Barnes, distinguished fellow at the School of Law, Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics and senior fellow at the Miller Center, and codirector for policy and public affairs for the Democracy Initiative, University of Virginia
Alexandra Bell, multidisciplinary artist
Maurice Berger, research professor and chief curator, Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Robin Bernstein, Dillon Professor of American History and professor of African and African American studies and of studies of women, gender, & sexuality, Harvard University
Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums, and lecturer on history of art and architecture, Harvard University
Lawrence D. Bobo, dean of social sciences, Harvard College Professor, and W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University
Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of History and professor of African and African American studies, Harvard University
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Joy Buolamwini, founder, Algorithmic Justice League
Chelsea Clinton, vice chair, Clinton Foundation
Jelani Cobb, Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism, Columbia University; staff writer, New Yorker
Teju Cole, photography critic, New York Times Magazine; Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing, Harvard University
Kasseem Dean (Swizz Beatz), record producer, rapper, and DJ
Kimberly Drew, writer, curator, and activist
Ava DuVernay, writer, director, producer, and film distributor
Michael Famighetti, editor, Aperture magazine
Drew Gilpin Faust, president emeritus, Harvard University
Cheryl Finley, associate professor of art history, Cornell University
Nicole R. Fleetwood, associate professor of American studies and graduate faculty in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
LaToya Ruby Frazier, photographer; video artist; and associate professor of photography, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Alan M. Garber, provost, Harvard University; Mallinckrodt Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School; professor of economics, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences; professor of public policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; and professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University
Theaster Gates, founder and executive director, Rebuild Foundation; inaugural distinguished artist in residence and director of artist initiatives, Lunder Institute for American Art; professor, Department of Visual Arts, the University of Chicago
Claudine Gay, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate
Agnes Gund, philanthropist and art collector; founder, Art for Justice Fund; president emerita, Museum of Modern Art
Catherine Gund, producer, director, writer, and activist; founder and director, Aubin Pictures
Mona Hanna-Attisha, assistant professor of pediatrics and human development and founder and director of the Michigan State University–Hurley Children's Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative, Michigan State University
Elizabeth Hinton, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department History and the Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Sadie Rain Hope-Gund, photographer and writer
Vijay Iyer, composer and pianist; Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts in the Department of Music and Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Robin Kelsey, dean of arts and humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Harvard University
Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., executive director, The Gordon Parks Foundation
Franklin Leonard, film executive; founder, the Black List
Sarah Lewis, assistant professor of history of art and architecture and African and African-American studies, Harvard University
Wynton Marsalis, musician, composer, and bandleader; managing and artistic director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, Harvard University
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University
Diane Paulus, Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater and professor of the practice of theatre in the Department of English, Harvard University
Leigh Raiford, associate professor and H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Chair of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director, Equal Justice Initiative; professor of clinical law, New York University
Latanya Sweeney, professor of government and technology in residence, Department of Government, Harvard University
Martha Tedeschi, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director, Harvard Art Museums
Hank Willis Thomas, conceptual artist
Naomi Wadler, activist
Darren Walker, president, Ford Foundation
Carrie Mae Weems, artist
Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and director of the Institute of African American Affairs, New York University
Damian Woetzel, president, the Juilliard School