Bayeté Ross Smith

Professor, New York University

Bayeté Ross Smith is a multidisciplinary artist, visual journalist, filmmaker, and Professor at NYU. He is Columbia Law School’s inaugural Artist-In-Residence, a Presidential Leadership Scholar, a CatchLight Global Fellow, and a TED Speaker.

He has created public art with the Apollo Theater, Lincoln Center, the PhotoSaintGermain and Paris Photo Festivals, Dysturb, The NYC Parks Department, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. His recent public sculpture series made of sugarcane and cotton boomboxes exhibited in New York, Paris, and Benin simultaneously. His journalistic work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian and PBS.

He has exhibited his work and presented keynotes internationally in France, China, Belgium, Ukraine, Benin, South Africa, Colombia, and Ethiopia. His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Oakland Museum of California, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Photo credit: Christopher Michel