KEYNOTE

Spatial Practice: Designing for Black Creative Autonomy and Care. A Conversation with Mara Brock Akil and Theaster Gates. Moderated by Sandra Jackson-Dumont.

DATE: Tuesday, Sep 29, 2026
TIME: 6:30–8:30pm
LOCATION: UCLA Luskin Conference Center425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095

about

What happens when Black spaces are engineered not just for mere endurance and performance, but for deep sanctuary, unfiltered rest, and rigorous intellectual/creative freedom? Join us for an urgent, high-stakes conversation bringing together two visionary world-builders: award-winning television creator and showrunner Mara Brock Akil and acclaimed multidisciplinary artist and urban planner Theaster Gates, moderated by cultural strategist, curator, and 2025–2026 Getty Research Institute Presidential Scholar Sandra Jackson-Dumont. Operating beyond the limits of traditional institutional walls, Brock Akil and Gates have built self-determined ecosystems designed for Black creative life to thrive. This session maps nuanced approaches across their practices, from Brock Akil’s private writer’s retreats designed as sacred micro-sanctuaries for narrative architecture, to Gates’s transformative public and private interventions through the Black Artists Retreat (B.A.R.) and Rebuild Foundation. Moving beyond the mere brick-and-mortar of urban planning, this dialogue also interrogates the radical politics of gathering. From a single quiet room to entire reclaimed city blocks, discover how curating space becomes a powerful strategy for cultural autonomy and future-making.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont

Sandra Jackson-Dumont is a curator, educator, and cultural strategist whose work critically reimagines the role of art museums in contemporary society. Recently appointed a Getty Research Institute Presidential Scholar, she brings a rigorous, interdisciplinary approach to questions of the canon, public engagement, and institutional transformation. As former Director and CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, she oversaw the operational development of an 11-acre cultural campus, including a 300,000-square-foot museum dedicated to narrative art.

Her career spans leadership roles at several of the United States’ most prominent cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Seattle Art Museum. Across contexts, Jackson-Dumont has cultivated collaborations with contemporary artists, communities, and historical collections, foregrounding programs that challenge conventional museological frameworks and epistemologies.

Her practice is distinguished by a commitment to equity, innovation, and relevance—principles that resonate with global debates on the future of cultural institutions. Through writing, lectures, and advisory engagements, Jackson-Dumont continues to shape international discourses on museum reform, offering critical insights for institutions seeking to foster inclusive, reflexive, and socially responsive cultural spaces. Equally astute in operational execution as she is in equity centered cultural strategy, Jackson Dumont pairs organizational and leadership excellence with a deep commitment to building institutions that strengthen social cohesion, democratic participation, and community well-being.

MARA BROCK AKIL

Mara Brock Akil has written and produced over 400 episodes of television, leaving her mark on Hollywood. She’s received Essence Magazine’s Visionary Award and the prestigious Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award by NATPE, and has been named in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter’s Showrunner Power Lists, as well as The Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment Power100” multiple times. In 2020, Brock Akil entered into a deal with Netflix to exclusively produce television shows for the streaming platform under her production banner, story27 Productions.

Her credits include writing and producing the hit show Girlfriends (2000–2008), The Game (2006–2015), Being Mary Jane (2013–2019), and executive producing Netflix’s STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING which was on the Academy Awards® Documentary Feature Shortlist. Mara’s most recent project was the critically acclaimed Netflix series adaptation of the 1975 Judy Blume novel FOREVER, starring Karen Pittman, Wood Harris, Lovie Simone, Michael Cooper Jr., and more. The series was renewed for a season 2 and premiered to rave reviews.

In 2021, Mara expanded her passion for non-profit work and started her very own non-profit writing residency in Los Angeles, the Writers’ Colony. The mission is to support up-and-coming underrepresented writers/creatives. The impact of the Writer’s Colony is something Mara is very proud of. She is delighted to continue the colony’s commitment to nurturing emerging writers, and providing them with exposure, access, and the tools they need to continue on their journeys.

At the 2026 Producer’s Guild Awards Mara received the prestigious Norman Lear Award. She was nominated for a WGA Award on behalf of her writing in season 1 of FOREVER; FOREVER was nominated for 4 awards at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, and won a Peabody Award.

tHEASTER GATES

Theaster Gates is an artist whose practice finds roots in conceptual formalism, sculpture, space theory, land art, and performance. Trained in urban planning and within the tradition of Japanese ceramics, Gates’s artistic philosophy is guided by the concepts of Shintoism, Buddhism and Animism – most notably honoring the “spirit within things.” Foundational to Gates’s practice is his custodianship and critical redeployment of culturally significant Black objects, archives, and spaces. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, Gates extends the life of disappearing and bygone histories, places, traditions, and loved ones.

Gates has exhibited and performed at the Albuquerque Foundation, Sintra, Portugal (2024); The LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2023, 2024); The New Museum, New York, (2022); The Aichi Triennial, Tokoname (2022); The Serpentine Pavilion, London (2022); The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2021); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013 and 2021); Tate Liverpool, UK (2020); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Palais de Tokyo Paris, France (2019); Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2016); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2016); Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013); and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012).

Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2025); Isamu Noguchi Award (2023); National Buildings Museum Vincent Scully Prize (2023); Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2022); an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (2021); the World Economic Forum Crystal Award (2020); J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2018); Nasher Sculpture Prize (2018); Sprengel Museum Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017); and Artes Mundi 6 Prize (2015).

Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and the College. Gates also serves as the Senior Advisor for Cultural Innovation and Advisor to the Dean. Gates is Director of Artists Initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College Museum of Art and the 2018/2019 Artist-in-Residence at the Getty Research Institute (GRI).