Tenderheaded: A Book Talk & Signing with Michaela Angela Davis The Center for Black Visual Culture welcomes former VIBE founding fashion director Michaela Angela Davis for a talk and signing of her memoir, Tenderheaded, in conversation with CBVC Program Director Dr. Joan Morgan. Having worked alongside icons like Diana Ross, Prince, and Maya Angelou, Davis offers both a celebration of Black media's vibrant history and a critical examination of its challenges and identity politics. Join us for an evening exploring race, beauty, and self-acceptance through the lens of a career spent shaping and reflecting Black culture. Part memoir and part cultural manifesto, Tenderheaded is a tribute to Black girls and women everywhere, examining the role media and American history play in shaping collective identity, and standing as a testament to self-acceptance. Michaela Angela Davis is a writer, image activist, and cultural critic who has shaped...

Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebllious Poet Film Screening Virtual post-screening discussion and Q&A with French director Matthieu Verdeil and distinguished scholar Dr. Robert Reid-Pharr. This program is organized by the Center for Black Visual Culture and co-sponsored by NYU Institute of French Studies and NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebellious Poet (52’ - 2025 - english subtitles) film will be shared to all registrants via link to view in advance of the program. This film link will be available for 48 hours only.Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebellious Poet is a captivating voyage through the 1920s — from Harlem to Marseille, via Jamaica, Russia and Morocco — in the footsteps of Jamaican American writer Claude McKay. A rebellious voice of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay spent two decades traveling the world, immersing himself in artistic and political avant-gardes whil...

On Collecting and Memory Work with Dejha Carrington and Damien Davis The Center for Black Visual Culture's 2026–27 Distinguished Artist-Scholar-in-Residence Dejha Carrington is joined in conversation by Brooklyn-based artist and curator Damien Davis. Carrington, co-founder of the collective art-collecting model Commissioner, and Davis, whose work reimagines cultural symbols to interrogate identity and history, will explore how art collecting practices and artistic production intersect as forms of memory work.  Dejha Carrington is an arts leader. In 2017, she co-founded Commissioner, a collaborative model and social practice that brings locals together to support contemporary artists and collect art in their cities. As Executive Director, she has cultivated a community of over 850 members to date, collectively funding more than 50 curated artist commissions in Miami, Detroit, Montréal, and Mexico City. From 2015 to 2022, she served a...

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,...