Black Portraiture[s]: The Black Built Environment

Dr. Bridget R. Cooks is a scholar and curator of American art. Her research focuses on visual art by African Americans, Black visual culture, and museum criticism. She serves as Chancellor’s Fellow and Professor of African American Studies and Art History at the University of California, Irvine. She is core faculty in the PhD Programs in Visual Studies and Culture and Theory. Her books, articles, and essays can be found widely across interdisciplinary academic publications and art exhibition catalogues. She is most well-known as the author of the book Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (UMass, 2011), which received the inaugural James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History.

Dr. Kellie Jones is Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History & Archaeology and Professor of African American & African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latinx and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. Dr. Jones has received numerous awards for her work from the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University; Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and a term as Scholar-in-Residence at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Europe in Giverny, France. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston) and the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia), she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2016. Dr. Jones’s writings have appeared in a multitude of exhibition catalogues and journals. She is the author of EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (2011), and South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (2017) and editor and co-editor of Black Curators Matter: Conversations on Art and Change, and David Hammons among others.

Photographer and historian Dr. Deborah Willis is Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging 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/co-author of several books including Reflections in Black: A Reframing; Photography & the Black Arts Movement; 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. Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include Reflections in Black: A Reframing, 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.

Mara Brock Akil has written and produced over 400 episodes of television, leaving her mark on Hollywood. She’s received Essence Magazine’s Visionary Award and the prestigious Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award by NATPE, and has been named in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter’s Showrunner Power Lists, as well as The Hollywood Reporter’s "Women in Entertainment Power100" multiple times. In 2020, Brock Akil entered into a deal with Netflix to exclusively produce television shows for the streaming platform under her production banner, story27 Productions.

Her credits include writing and producing the hit show Girlfriends (2000–2008), The Game (2006–2015), Being Mary Jane (2013–2019), and executive producing Netflix’s STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING which was on the Academy Awards® Documentary Feature Shortlist. Mara’s most recent project was the critically acclaimed Netflix series adaptation of the 1975 Judy Blume novel FOREVER, starring Karen Pittman, Wood Harris, Lovie Simone, Michael Cooper Jr., and more. The series was renewed for a season 2 and premiered to rave reviews.

In 2021, Mara expanded her passion for non-profit work and started her very own non-profit writing residency in Los Angeles, the Writers’ Colony. The mission is to support up-and-coming underrepresented writers/creatives. The impact of the Writer’s Colony is something Mara is very proud of. She is delighted to continue the colony’s commitment to nurturing emerging writers, and providing them with exposure, access, and the tools they need to continue on their journeys.

At the 2026 Producer’s Guild Awards Mara received the prestigious Norman Lear Award. She was nominated for a WGA Award on behalf of her writing in season 1 of FOREVER; FOREVER was nominated for 4 awards at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, and won a Peabody Award.

Theaster Gates is an artist whose practice finds roots in conceptual formalism, sculpture, space theory, land art, and performance. Trained in urban planning and within the tradition of Japanese ceramics, Gates's artistic philosophy is guided by the concepts of Shintoism, Buddhism and Animism - most notably honoring the "spirit within things." Foundational to Gates's practice is his custodianship and critical redeployment of culturally significant Black objects, archives, and spaces. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, Gates extends the life of disappearing and bygone histories, places, traditions, and loved ones.

Gates has exhibited and performed at the Albuquerque Foundation, Sintra, Portugal (2024); The LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2023, 2024); The New Museum, New York, (2022); The Aichi Triennial, Tokoname (2022); The Serpentine Pavilion, London (2022); The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2021); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013 and 2021); Tate Liverpool, UK (2020); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Palais de Tokyo Paris, France (2019); Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2016); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2016); Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013); and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012).

Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2025); Isamu Noguchi Award (2023); National Buildings Museum Vincent Scully Prize (2023); Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2022); an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (2021); the World Economic Forum Crystal Award (2020); J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2018); Nasher Sculpture Prize (2018); Sprengel Museum Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017); and Artes Mundi 6 Prize (2015).

Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and the College. Gates also serves as the Senior Advisor for Cultural Innovation and Advisor to the Dean. Gates is Director of Artists Initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College Museum of Art and the 2018/2019 Artist-in-Residence at the Getty Research Institute (GRI).

Sandra Jackson-Dumont is a curator, educator, and cultural strategist whose work critically reimagines the role of art museums in contemporary society. Recently appointed a Getty Research Institute Presidential Scholar, she brings a rigorous, interdisciplinary approach to questions of the canon, public engagement, and institutional transformation. As former Director and CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, she oversaw the operational development of an 11-acre cultural campus, including a 300,000-square-foot museum dedicated to narrative art.

Her career spans leadership roles at several of the United States’ most prominent cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Seattle Art Museum. Across contexts, Jackson-Dumont has cultivated collaborations with contemporary artists, communities, and historical collections, foregrounding programs that challenge conventional museological frameworks and epistemologies.

Her practice is distinguished by a commitment to equity, innovation, and relevance—principles that resonate with global debates on the future of cultural institutions. Through writing, lectures, and advisory engagements, Jackson-Dumont continues to shape international discourses on museum reform, offering critical insights for institutions seeking to foster inclusive, reflexive, and socially responsive cultural spaces. Equally astute in operational execution as she is in equity centered cultural strategy, Jackson Dumont pairs organizational and leadership excellence with a deep commitment to building institutions that strengthen social cohesion, democratic participation, and community well-being.