Uploaded February 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
This conversation explores the role of the artist, producing creative work, and meaning-making in the face of threats to freedom of expression. Featured speakers: American Artist, Diedrick Brackens and Rashaad Newsome. Moderated by Devin Malone, director of public programs and community engagement at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
About the speakers
American Artist (they/them) makes thought experiments that mine the history of technology, race, and knowledge production, beginning with their legal name change in 2013. Their artwork primarily takes the form of sculpture, software, and video.
Rashaad Newsome (he/him) works at the intersection of Art, Film, Performance, Music, Technology, and Community organizing. Rashaad's work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), The National Museum of African American History and Culture (DC), The Park Avenue Armory (NYC), The Whitney Museum (NYC), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), and Hayward Gallery (London).
Diedrick Brackens (he/him) (b. 1989 in Mexia, Texas) explores the intersections of identity and sociopolitical issues by creating handwoven tapestries that reexamine allegory and narrative through material, autobiography, and the broader themes of African American and queer identity, American history and memory.
Devin Malone (they/them) is a cultural producer based in California. They have developed and produced education programs at Dia Art Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City, as well as Gallery 400, Threewalls, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
About Lunder Institute @
Lunder Institute @, an initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art, invites thought leaders at the nation’s most prominent art institutions to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art? These convenings will promote discourse in an open and fertile space leading toward innovation, new areas of exploration, and possible answers to questions that continue to arise around what American art is and what impacts its production, its scholarship, and its research.
About the Lunder Institute for American Art
A collaborative initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art, located in central Maine, the Lunder Institute for American Art supports innovative research and creative production that expands the boundaries of American art. The Lunder Institute invites visiting artists, scholars, and museum professionals to engage across disciplines with Colby faculty and students, the College’s network of institutional partners, leading experts, and other creative collaborators. Through fellowships, workshops, symposia, and incubator grants, the Lunder Institute amplifies marginalized voices, challenges convention, and provides a platform for generative dialogue through art and scholarship.
Sponsor
Lunder Institute @ the de Young museum is made possible through the support and partnership of the Lunder Institute for American Art, the Colby College Museum of Art.
Thumbnail image courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photograph by Randy Dodson, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
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This conversation explores the role of the artist, producing creative work, and meaning-making in the face of threats to freedom of expression. Featured speakers: American Artist, Diedrick Brackens and Rashaad Newsome. Moderated by Devin Malone, director of public programs and community engagement at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
About the speakers
American Artist (they/them) makes thought experiments that mine the history of technology, race, and knowledge production, beginning with their legal name change in 2013. Their artwork primarily takes the form of sculpture, software, and video.
Rashaad Newsome (he/him) works at the intersection of Art, Film, Performance, Music, Technology, and Community organizing. Rashaad's work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), The National Museum of African American History and Culture (DC), The Park Avenue Armory (NYC), The Whitney Museum (NYC), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), and Hayward Gallery (London).
Diedrick Brackens (he/him) (b. 1989 in Mexia, Texas) explores the intersections of identity and sociopolitical issues by creating handwoven tapestries that reexamine allegory and narrative through material, autobiography, and the broader themes of African American and queer identity, American history and memory.
Devin Malone (they/them) is a cultural producer based in California. They have developed and produced education programs at Dia Art Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City, as well as Gallery 400, Threewalls, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
About Lunder Institute @
Lunder Institute @, an initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art, invites thought leaders at the nation’s most prominent art institutions to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art? These convenings will promote discourse in an open and fertile space leading toward innovation, new areas of exploration, and possible answers to questions that continue to arise around what American art is and what impacts its production, its scholarship, and its research.
About the Lunder Institute for American Art
A collaborative initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art, located in central Maine, the Lunder Institute for American Art supports innovative research and creative production that expands the boundaries of American art. The Lunder Institute invites visiting artists, scholars, and museum professionals to engage across disciplines with Colby faculty and students, the College’s network of institutional partners, leading experts, and other creative collaborators. Through fellowships, workshops, symposia, and incubator grants, the Lunder Institute amplifies marginalized voices, challenges convention, and provides a platform for generative dialogue through art and scholarship.
Sponsor
Lunder Institute @ the de Young museum is made possible through the support and partnership of the Lunder Institute for American Art, the Colby College Museum of Art.
Thumbnail image courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photograph by Randy Dodson, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Subscribe to our channel: https://dey.ng/our-channel
Don’t miss our upcoming programs! Sign up for our newsletter: https://dey.ng/newsletter
![[Day 2] Bridges: Social Engagement in Artists’ Books/ 2021 Reva and David Logan Symposium](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/__Kti0abfM8/mqdefault.jpg "[Day 2] Bridges: Social Engagement in Artists’ Books/ 2021 Reva and David Logan Symposium
As potent tools for understanding, books can bridge disparate cultures. This year’s Logan Symposium brings together six powerful and courageous voices, artists who have traveled the world, and traveled within themselves, to bring back visual and poetic testimony
About the Speakers:
Laura Anderson Barbata: Book Making in the Amazon Rain Forest: Preserving a Culture
Laura Anderson Barbata, a transdisciplinary artist with studios in New York and Mexico City, produces work that, in her words, is “intended to connect various cultures . . . by engaging creative practices that promote dignity, shared values, diversity, and collaboration through reciprocal exchange of knowledge.” Her work with the Yanomami of southern Venezuela led to the production of handmade paper and an award-winning book that preserves the belief systems of their culture. The project became a tool for advocacy, social justice, self-determination, and environmental protection. (lauraandersonbarbata.com)
Clifton Meador: This Is Not Tibet
Clifton Meador combines writing, photography, printmaking, and design to make printed works that explore how the narratives of culture, history, and place are the basis for identity. For a 2006–2007 research project in Tibet, he produced detailed photo documentation of the production of printed sutras at a Tibetan temple. He later created a series of artist’s books inspired by the experience. Meador has worked as a pressman at several commercial, literary, and small–press production facilities. He is a professor in the Department of Art at Appalachian State University. (clifton-meador.com)")
