Screening: Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot with Barbara McCullough

A native of New Orleans, Barbara McCullough has lived most of her life in southern California. Her initial interest was in photography, but the moving image, immediacy of video, and textures captured on film, set her on a path of exploration. McCullough’s work progressed examining the creative process of artists but always maintaining a fascination with experimental film and video. She sees herself as a part of the continuum of African American storytellers whose aim is to preserve knowledge by capturing the essence of its life, spirit, and magic. Seeing beyond a mere glance but revealing its seen and unseen essence, she states, “the work and heritage of the African American artist / cultural worker provide a link to past achievements often overlooked but necessary to provide links for future generations to keep the music and visual poetry alive.”

Her works include: Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification, Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflection on Ritual Space, Fragments, The World Saxophone Quartet, and Horace Tapscott Musical Griot. Water Ritual #1 was awarded an Avant Garde Masters Grant by the National Film Preservation Foundation in 2010. She is associated with UCLA filmmakers known as the LA Rebellion and her work has been shown in galleries, museums, and film festivals nationally and internationally.

Kristin Juarez, PhD, is senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute where she supports the African American Art History Initiative as well as academic outreach. Her research engages histories of collaboration and multidisciplinary experimentation at the intersection of visual art, performance, and the moving image. Juarez was co-curator for the exhibitions Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures (2021), and since 2020, she has curated the ongoing film program Dancers on Film. In 2025, she launched an ongoing curriculum workshop series aimed at connecting higher ed faculty with teaching resources at the GRI. She is currently working on a collaborative research project on the artist, curator, and scholar Dr. Samella Lewis, as well as co-curator of the exhibition How to Be a Guerrilla Girl currently on view at the Getty Center.