Conference

Thursday, February 17, 2022 | Friday, February 18, 2022 | Saturday, February 19, 2022

Keynote: 42nd Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series at The Newark Museum of Art

9:00 – 2:00pm, The Newark Museum of Art

On the final day, the 42nd Annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture will be held at the Newark Museum of Art, featuring keynote artists who all foreground the themes of play, utopia, and performances in their work. Conversations will take place from 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. and will include photographer Tyler Mitchell with Dr. Deborah Willis; visual artist Bisa Butler and Linda Harrison, the Director and the CEO of the Newark Museum of Art, and Grammy-award nominated jazz violinist Regina Carter in dialogue with renowned scholar Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin, and playwright Dominique Morisseau in conversation with Kamilah Forbes, the Executive Producer of Apollo Theater.

The Annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture (MTW) series was co-founded in 1981 by Clement A. Price, Giles R. Wright, and the MTW Study Club, who launched the series with the conviction that understanding the historical context of racism would aid in organizing struggles, building a beloved community and a better world. The conference is named in honor of East Orange native Marion Thompson Wright (1902–1962), the first black female to earn a history Ph.D.—the focus was on “The Education of Negroes in New Jersey” (Columbia University, 1941). Her research helped the NAACP overturn the “separate but equal” doctrine in “Brown v. Board of Education.” In her honor, the Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series brings outstanding thinkers and doers of African and African American life and history. The MTW series is diverse, civically engaged, and devoted to life-long learners.

The Newark Museum of Art 
Saturday, February 19, 2022
Schedule of Events

Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995 Atlanta, GA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, NL, as well as the International Center of Photography, New York, NY. He has also been included in group exhibitions at the Aperture Foundation, New York, NY, and Red Hook Labs, Brooklyn, NY. He has lectured at a number of institutions on the politics of image-making including Harvard University, Paris Photo, and the International Center of Photography (ICP). Mitchell was also awarded the 2020 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship.

Deborah Willis, PhD, is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is the author of The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, among others. Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: “Framing Moments in the KIA,” “Migrations and Meanings in Art”, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” at the International Center of Photography; Out of Fashion Photography; Framing Beauty at the Henry Art Gallery and “Reframing Beauty: Intimate Moments” at Indiana University.

Regina Carter

Violinist/educator, Regina Carter is a recipient of the MacArthur ‘genius’ award and a Doris Duke Artist Award, as well as a three-time Pulitzer Prize jurist. In 2018, Regina Carter was named artistic director of the Geri Allen Jazz Camp, formerly named, New Jersey Performing Arts All-Female Jazz Residency.

Regina tours with her own group and has appeared with such performers as Wynton Marsalis and JALC, Kenny Barron, Ray Brown, Mary J. Blige, Chucho Valdés, Joe Jackson, Billy Joel, Dolly Parton and Omara Portuondo. She has also been a guest soloist with several major symphony orchestras, including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo.

She is currently on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and New Jersey City University and is artist in residence at the Oakland University School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. She has been resident artist for San Francisco Performances, and resident artistic director for SFJAZZ.

Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University where she also served as the inaugural Chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and an Andrew Mellon Foundation Scholar in Residence. Professor Griffin received her B.A. in History & Literature from Harvard and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. She is the author or editor of eight books including Who Set You Flowin?: The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001), and Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II (Basic Books, 2013). Griffin collaborated with composer, pianist, Geri Allen and director, actor S. Epatha Merkerson on two theatrical projects, for which she wrote the book: The first, “Geri Allen and Friends Celebrate the Great Jazz Women of the Apollo,” with Lizz Wright, Dianne Reeves, Teri Lyne Carrington and others, premiered on the main stage of the Apollo Theater in May of 2013. The second, “A Conversation with Mary Lou” featuring vocalist Carmen Lundy, premiered at Harlem Stage in March 2014 and was performed at The John F. Kennedy Center in May of 2016. Her most recent book is Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (W.W. Norton, 2021).

Bisa Butler was born in Orange, NJ, the daughter of a college president and a French teacher. She was raised in South Orange and the youngest of four siblings. Butler’s artistic talent was first recognized at the age of four, when she won a blue ribbon in an art competition.

Formally trained, Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art degree. It was during her education at Howard that Butler was able to refine her natural talents under the tutelage of lecturers such as Lois Mailou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson and Ernie Barnes. She began to experiment with fabric as a medium and became interested in collage techniques.

Butler then went on to earn a Masters in Art from Montclair State University in 2005.

While in the process of obtaining her Masters degree Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art. “As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a portrait quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been making art quilts ever since.”

Bisa Butler was a high school art teacher for 10 years in the Newark Public Schools and 3 years at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.

In February 2021 Bisa was awarded a United States Artist fellowship.Butler’s work is currently the focus of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the second stop of a traveling exhibit which began at the Katonah Museum of Art. The Toledo Museum of Art is also currently exhibiting Butler’s work in a group show. Butlers work has been acquired by many private and public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Nelson-Adkins Museum , 21cMuseum Hotels, The Kemper Museum of Art, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Toledo Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Linda Harrison

As the Director and CEO of The Newark Museum of Art, a large, complex, urban museum campus, Linda plays a strategic and unifying role for the organization with the City and fellow anchor Institutions.

Linda revels in developing and communicating an inspiring vision that is inclusive, achievable, and sustainable. ensuring financial sustainability for the Museum, strengthen and expanding the Museum’s ties to its community.

During the first of her three-year vision plan, Linda established a new Senior Leadership Team and revamped the organization for more engaging community impact with an extensive DEAI Racial and Gender Equity Framework developed and implemented internally and externally. Linda currently serves on the following Board of Trustees, Alliance of American Museum Directors (AAMD), American Alliance of Museums (AAM), Regional Planning Association, (RPA) Art Pride, NJ, Newark Alliance Collaborative and the City of Newark Re-Opening and Recovery Strike Force.

Dominique Morisseau is the author of The Detroit Project (A 3-Play Cycle): Skeleton Crew (Atlantic Theater Company), Paradise Blue (Signature Theatre), and Detroit ’67 (Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem and NBT). Additional plays include: Pipeline (Lincoln Center Theatre), Sunset Baby (LAByrinth Theatre), Blood at the Root (National Black Theatre), and Follow Me To Nellie’s (Premiere Stages). She is also the TONY nominated book writer on the Broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations (Imperial Theatre). She most recently served as Co-Producer on the Showtime series “Shameless.” Awards include: Spirit of Detroit Award, PoNY Fellowship, Sky-Cooper Prize, TEER Trailblazer Award, Steinberg Playwright Award, Audelco Awards, NBFT August Wilson Playwriting Award, Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, OBIE Award (2), and the Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, named one of Variety’s Women of Impact for 2017-18 and a recipient of the 2018 MacArthur Genius Grant.

Kamilah Forbes is an award-winning director and producer for theater and television. She currently serves as the Executive Producer at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Kamilah is committed to the development of creative works by, for, and about the Hip-Hop generation. As a proud Howard University alum, she has won awards for both directing and producing, including the 2019 NBTF Larry Leon Hamlin Producer Award and an NAACP Image Award. Directing credits include “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,” written by Lynn Nottage “Blood Quilt” written by Katori Hall, and “Sunset Baby” written by Dominique Morrisseau. She has also worked closely with Kenny Leon on “The Wiz Live,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Mountaintop,” and “Stick Fly” on Broadway. Kamilah’s most recent directorial work for television is HBO’s “Between the World and Me”.