Tracking Down Our Roots: A Conversation with Ishmael Reed @morganlibrary
Tracking Down Our Roots: A Conversation with Ishmael Reed  @morganlibrary
Uploaded February 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Join novelist, poet, and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Ishmael Reed for a conversation on the empowering role of art as a vehicle for reclaiming elements of African spirituality and culture. Reed has explored this theme in his writing, including in his collaboration with Betye Saar on A Secretary to the Spirits in the 1970s. He is the author of more than thirty titles including the acclaimed novel Mumbo Jumbo, as well as non-fiction, plays, and poetry. Six collages from the Morgan collection that Betye Saar made in response to Reed’s poems are currently on view in the exhibition, Betye Saar: Call and Response.

Held Wednesday, November 18, 2020.
Tracking Down Our Roots: A Conversation with Ishmael ReedNaudline Pierre on William Blake and the importance of the imagination | Collection in FocusThe Only Manuscript in Jane Austens Hand | Collection in FocusWoody Guthrie: People Are the SongMore Than a Portrait: How Action Photographs Capture their Subjects Essence |  Collection in FocusSymposium | A Draftsman of the First Order: Renoir’s Drawing Practice, Part IIMaking The Little PrinceInside the Morgan: The Entrance Hall and East RoomHow a Renaissance Tarot Card Was MadeRenoirs Artistic Practice | Collection in FocusThe Innovation and Experimentation of Jack Whitten | Collection in FocusJane Austens Pelisse
The Morgan Library & Museum |

Tracking Down Our Roots: A Conversation with Ishmael Reed

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