Join us as we welcome Free as They Want to Be co-curator, Deborah Willis, Ph.D., for an in-depth discussion of the creation of the exhibition, the research she and fellow curator Cheryl Finley, Ph.D. conducted in advance of the exhibition, and how Black photography fundamentally redefines our understanding of American history.
She will also be discussing the 25th anniversary release of her book, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.
As with all programming being held in conjunction with Free as They Want to Be, this event will be open to all with no admission fees.
About Deborah Willis, Ph.D.
Deborah Willis, Ph.D., 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, Guggenheim Fellowship and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She has received awards from the College Art Association for Writing Art History in 2021, the Outstanding Service Award from the Royal Photographic Society in the UK and the 2022 Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art.
She is the author/co-author of several books including KAMALA: Her Historic, Joyful, and Auspicious Sprint to the White House, 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. In addition to Free as They Want to Be, Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: "Home: Reimagining Interiority" at YoungArts, Miami, "Framing Moments in the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts," and "Migrations and Meanings in Art."
Most recently, Dr. Willis was named the 2023 Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence by the Norton Museum of Art.
