Uploaded April 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Join us for a conversation with Natasha Becker, curator of African art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and interdisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome. They will explore the influence, impact, and legacies of ballroom culture in Harlem and New York City and artists who, like Patrick Kelly, were inspired by it.
About the Speakers
Natasha Becker, born and raised in South Africa, joined the Museums in December 2020. Working in Cape Town, South Africa and New York City, over the past decade, she has focused on presenting the work of African artists, African American artists, and artists of the African diaspora, organizing numerous exhibitions and international initiatives. She worked at the Clark Institute for seven years as the assistant director for Mellon Initiatives and, more recently, as co-curator at the new Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice Art Gallery. She has also served as a curatorial adviser at the Face Foundation, curator in residence at Faction Art Projects in Harlem, and senior curator at the Goodman Gallery in South Africa. Natasha is one of the cofounders of Assembly Room, a curatorial platform for the advancement of women curators and artists in New York. She holds a master’s in African history from the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, and studied art history at Binghamton University, New York.
Rashaad Newsome’s work blends several practices, including collage, sculpture, film, photography, music, computer programming, software engineering, community organizing, and performance, to create an altogether new field. Using the diasporic traditions of improvisation, he pulls from the world of advertising, the internet, art history, and Black and Queer culture, to produce work that challenges the status quo and that walks the tightrope between social practice, abstraction, and intersectionality. Collage acts as a conceptual and technical method to construct a new cultural framework of power that does not find the oppression of others necessary. Newsome’s work celebrates Black contributions to the art canon and creates innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media. Learn more about Rashaad Newsome: rashaadnewsome.com/about.
Learn more about the exhibition: deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/patrick-kelly
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Join us for a conversation with Natasha Becker, curator of African art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and interdisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome. They will explore the influence, impact, and legacies of ballroom culture in Harlem and New York City and artists who, like Patrick Kelly, were inspired by it.
About the Speakers
Natasha Becker, born and raised in South Africa, joined the Museums in December 2020. Working in Cape Town, South Africa and New York City, over the past decade, she has focused on presenting the work of African artists, African American artists, and artists of the African diaspora, organizing numerous exhibitions and international initiatives. She worked at the Clark Institute for seven years as the assistant director for Mellon Initiatives and, more recently, as co-curator at the new Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice Art Gallery. She has also served as a curatorial adviser at the Face Foundation, curator in residence at Faction Art Projects in Harlem, and senior curator at the Goodman Gallery in South Africa. Natasha is one of the cofounders of Assembly Room, a curatorial platform for the advancement of women curators and artists in New York. She holds a master’s in African history from the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, and studied art history at Binghamton University, New York.
Rashaad Newsome’s work blends several practices, including collage, sculpture, film, photography, music, computer programming, software engineering, community organizing, and performance, to create an altogether new field. Using the diasporic traditions of improvisation, he pulls from the world of advertising, the internet, art history, and Black and Queer culture, to produce work that challenges the status quo and that walks the tightrope between social practice, abstraction, and intersectionality. Collage acts as a conceptual and technical method to construct a new cultural framework of power that does not find the oppression of others necessary. Newsome’s work celebrates Black contributions to the art canon and creates innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media. Learn more about Rashaad Newsome: rashaadnewsome.com/about.
Learn more about the exhibition: deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/patrick-kelly
Subscribe to our channel: https://dey.ng/our-channel
Don’t miss our upcoming programs! Sign up for our newsletter: https://dey.ng/newsletter
