Holding Lightning The Life, Loves, and Art of Whitney Houston The Center for Black Visual Culture welcomes author and cultural critic Emily Lordi for a talk and signing of her new biography, Holding Lightning: The Life, Loves, and Art of Whitney Houston, in conversation with ethnomusicologist Dr. Fredara Hadley. Drawing on unprecedented access to Houston’s inner circle, Lordi reframes the icon known as “The Voice” as a serious artist and woman of conviction who insisted on being the architect of her own career. Join us for an evening that places Whitney Houston’s life and legacy within the larger history of Black celebrity. Holding Lightning: The Life, Loves, and Art of Whitney Houston is the first major biography of an artist whose soaring voice defined a generation and helped open the door for Black women in pop music. Lordi moves beyond the familiar narrative of Houston as a tragic figure shaped by others, instead revealing...

Black Portraiture: Los Angeles The Black Built Environment Black Portraiture: Los Angeles: The Black Built Environment will examine the historicity and rich panoply encompassing the Black built environment, both physical and imagined. Exploring the concept and its relationship to photography, architecture, urban planning, and visual culture, artists have reconceived and reconstructed visions of our built environment while exploring themes conversant with the spiritual and ritualistic continuities of the African diaspora. Moreover, this convening will explore the artistic contributions to forms of memory, visual legacies of Black townships, and the charges of conceived spaces therein. The conference will present and encourage research and scholarship on continuities between modern and contemporary visual and structural approaches, centering the audacity of Black-built environments from within the Diaspora’s politics, architecture, art,...

Caught in the Act: Desire, Womanhood, and the “Good Woman” in Nollywood Programmed by Gallatin MA Candidate Eliel Peterson, join NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture for a screening of the 2008 Nollywood film Caught in the Act, directed by Charles Inojie and co-presented by Nolly Babes. The film follows separated twin sisters, played by Genevieve Nnaji, whose lives collide as one sister deals with an abusive mother-in-law, and the other, a life of crime. The screening will be followed by a conversation featuring Venessa Appiah, Jediael Peterson, and Baaba Annan, current doctoral scholars whose work engages questions of gender, identity, and visual culture. Together, the panelists will consider how Nollywood has represented women’s desire and agency, the cultural expectations attached to the figure of the “good woman,” and the ways African filmmakers use popular cinema to negotiate, and challenge, ideas of respectability, w...

Dejha Carrington Artist-Scholar in Residence Welcome Reception Join the Center for Black Visual Culture as we welcome Dejha Carrington, CBVC’s 2026–27 Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, for a celebratory reception marking the start of her fellowship. Carrington is an arts leader and co-founder of Commissioner, a collaborative model and social practice that brings locals together to support contemporary artists and collect art in their cities. Come welcome Dejha to CBVC as she begins a residency dedicated to storytelling, process, and meaning-making in the arts. Dejha Carrington is an arts leader and cultural practitioner. In 2017, she cofounded Commissioner, an innovative membership model and social practice that brings locals together to support contemporary artists and collect art in their cities. As Executive Director, she has cultivated an inclusive community that has collectively funded over 50 curated artist commissions in ...

TCB – the Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing Film Screening Join the Center for Black Visual Culture as welcome filmmaker Louis Massiah for a screening a conversation on TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing. This program is co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora and NYU Arts & Science Department of English.TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 minutes) is a biography of the influential writer, filmmaker and cultural worker, who with humor and deep insight, inspired a generation of artists to dedicate themselves to community empowerment. The film is structured as a series of lessons on cultural organizing, gleaned from Bambara’s life and shared by her friends, colleagues and students. Toni Cade Bambara (1939–1995) was a writer, documentary filmmaker, and activist whose groundbreaking works, including The Black Woman (1970), Gorilla, My Love (1972), and The S...