Welcome: Past is Presence
10:00 AM–11:00 AM
Remarks:
Paul Farber (Director, Monument Lab)
As Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab, Paul Farber is among the nation's thought leaders on monuments, memory, and public space. Farber is author and co-editor of several publications including A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall (2020), Monument Lab: Creative Speculations on Philadelphia (2020), and the National Monument Audit (2021). His forthcoming book, After Permanence: The Future of Monuments, will be published with the University of North Carolina Press. Farber’s curatorial and collaborative work includes Beyond Granite: Pulling Together with Salamishah Tillet, the first curated multi-artist public art exhibition on the National Mall in Washington D.C. (2023), and Declaration House in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park (2024) with Anna Arabindan-Kesson and Yolanda Wisher. Farber is the host and creator of The Statue, a podcast series from WHYY/NPR. Farber is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a PhD from the University of Michigan in American Culture. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Board of Directors of A Long Walk Home.
Elizabeth Alexander (President, Mellon Foundation)
An acclaimed poet, scholar, and cultural advocate, Elizabeth Alexander is a nationally recognized thought leader on race, justice, the arts, and American society. As president of the Mellon Foundation, she leads a multi-billion-dollar philanthropy and the nation’s largest funder of the arts and humanities, supporting educational institutions and cultural organizations while envisioning and guiding new initiatives to build just communities across the United States.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Alexander served as the director of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation, shaping Ford’s grantmaking vision in arts and culture, journalism, and documentary film. During that time, she co-designed the Art for Justice Fund, an initiative that uses art and advocacy to address the crisis of mass incarceration.
Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Yale University — where she taught for over 15 years and helped rebuild and chaired the African American Studies Department — and Columbia University. An author or co-author of fifteen books, Dr. Alexander was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize: for poetry with American Sublime and for biography with her 2015 memoir, the New York Times best-seller The Light of the World. In 2009, she composed and delivered the poem "Praise Song for the Day" for President Barack Obama's inauguration. Her latest book, released in 2022, is The Trayvon Generation.
Dr. Alexander holds a BA from Yale University, an MA from Boston University, and a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the boards of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and the Pulitzer Prize, and is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets. In 2019, she received the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University. Among her many other honors, she has been recognized as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People.
Tiffany Tavarez (Board Chair, Monument Lab and Senior Vice President of Diverse Segments, Representation and Inclusion, Wells Fargo)
Tiffany Tavarez serves as Senior Vice President of Diverse Segments, Representation and Inclusion (DSRI) at Wells Fargo. DSRI focuses on expanding diversity at all levels of the company, intentionally deepening the company’s commitment and connection to employees and diverse suppliers and developing products and services for customer segments that are critical to our business. Prior to joining DSRI, Tiffany was Senior Vice President of Community Sponsorships and Strategy, Wells Fargo Advisors and Vice President of Community Relations for the Wells Fargo Foundation. Her career in inclusive philanthropy, program development & strategy and stakeholder engagement has included organizations such as Exelon, Comcast, Temple University, and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.
She has been honored with numerous awards and recognitions from across the region for her leadership and volunteerism. In 2023, Tiffany was recognized as one of the Top Women and Top Latino Power Players by Metro Philadelphia; was named a Woman of Influence by the Philadelphia Business Journal and City & State Pennsylvania Top 100 Leaders in Diversity. She was also named a 2023 Marshall Memorial Fellow (MMF). MMF is the German Marshall Fund’s flagship leadership development program to introduce a new generation of leaders from business, government and civil society to expand their understanding of transatlantic relations with the EU, and to create new networks and opportunities for global collaboration.
In addition to serving as Chair of the Board of Directors for Monument Lab, she also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Esperanza; Commissioner for the Pennsylvania Commission for Women under Governor Shapiro; and Director-at-Large for the Board of Directors, Forum of Executive Women. She is a first-generation college graduate who has earned degrees from both Temple University and University of the Arts.
Yolanda Wisher (Senior Curator, Monument Lab)
Monument Lab Senior Curator Yolanda Wisher is a poet, musician, educator, and the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014). Wisher holds an M.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from Temple University and a B.A. in English and Black Studies and an honorary doctorate from her alma mater Lafayette College. Wisher was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1999 and the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia for 2016 and 2017. She currently serves as the chair of the Philadelphia Poet Laureate Governing Committee. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, Wisher received the Leeway Foundation's Transformation Award in 2019 for her commitment to art for social change and was named a Philadelphia Cultural Treasures Artist Fellow in 2022. Wisher performs a blend of poetry and song with her band Yolanda Wisher & The Afroeaters; their debut album Doublehanded Suite was released in 2022. Wisher taught high school English for a decade, co-founded the youth-led Germantown Poetry Festival, and served as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts. She is also the founder of the School of Guerrilla Poetics, a training ground for folks interested in nurturing and mobilizing communities through poetry. Along with Trapeta B. Mayson, Wisher leads ConsenSIS (consensisphl.com), an initiative that seeks to count, gather, and memorialize Black femme poets in the Philadelphia area. Wisher’s curatorial work includes Declaration House in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park (2024) with Anna Arabindan-Kesson and Paul Farber.
Keynote Conversation – Getting Word: Origins & Outcomes of Our Nation’s Founding
11:00 AM–12:00 PM
Poem:
Kai Davis (Artist, Educator, Philadelphia Poet Laureate 2024-2025)
Kai Davis (she/they) is a Black Queer multidisciplinary artist, educator, and The Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. Her work explores Blackness, Queerness, womanhood, grief and the many ways these themes converge. Kai has performed for TEDX Philly, CNN, BET, PBS, and NPR, among others. She is a two-time international grand slam champion, winning Brave New Voices in 2011 and The College Union Poetry Slam Invitational in 2016. In 2017 Kai received the Leeway Transformation Award for her years of art for social change work in Philadelphia. She is currently a Co-Organizer and Creative Director for The Philly Pigeon Poetry Show, which won the Poetry Foundation’s Equity in Verse Grant in 2023. Her work has been published by 2 Pens & Lint (2012), The Offing (2018), The Shade Journal (2019), and Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought (2021) among others.
Moderator:
Justin Garrett Moore (Program Director, Humanities in Place, Mellon Foundation)
Justin Garrett Moore is the program director for Humanities in Place at the Mellon Foundation. His work focuses on advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice through place-based initiatives and programs, built environments, cultural heritage projects, and commemorative spaces and landscapes.
Prior to joining Mellon, Justin was the executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission, where he spearheaded initiatives to address social equity and sustainability through improved built environment design and public processes. He has led several urban design and planning projects for the City of New York, including the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront, Hunter’s Point South, and the Brooklyn Cultural District. Justin serves as an adjunct associate professor of architecture at Columbia University and has taught at Morgan State University, Tuskegee University, and the Yale School of Architecture. In 2021, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture and was named to the United States Commission of Fine Arts by President Joseph Biden.
He holds a BDes from the University of Florida, as well as an MArch and an MS in architecture and urban design from Columbia University.
Keynote Speakers:
Erica Armstrong Dunbar (Historian, Professor, Author of Never Caught and She Came to Slay)
Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a historian, professor of history at Rutgers University, and main historical consultant and co-executive producer for HBO’s The Gilded Age, whose work shines a light on racial injustice, slavery, and gender inequality. She is the author of Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction and received the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Award. Dunbar’s most recent book, She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman, is a lively, informative, and illustrated tribute to one of the most exceptional women in American history whose fearlessness and activism still resonate today. An accomplished scholar, Dunbar was named the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH) in 2019, an organization dedicated to continuing the advancement for the study of black women’s history. In 2011, she also became the Inaugural Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, a position she held until 2018.
Andrew M. Davenport (Director, Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Monticello)
Andrew M. Davenport is the Director of African American History & The Getting Word Project at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello). He is a Ph.D. Candidate at Georgetown University studying slavery and its legacies in the United States. His articles have appeared in Ralph Ellison in Context (ed. Paul Devlin, Cambridge University Press, 2021), Mourning the Presidents (eds. Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello, UVA Press, 2023), and French Cultural Studies (March 2023).
Panel – Possible Futures: Visions of Democracy & Belonging
1:30 PM–2:30 PM
Moderator:
Wit López (Artist, Founder and Artistic Director, Till Arts Project)
Wit López is an internationally-acclaimed, award-winning multidisciplinary maker, performance artist, cultural advocate, and essayist who has been based in Philadelphia, PA for the past 20 years. Their creative practice combines the skills their parents taught them–fiber art, painting, collage, and photography–and elements of their formal training in theatre and classical music, including costuming, staging, and props.
Their visual work and performance art uses their background in Anthropology and Africana Studies as a lens to examine, decolonize, and reconstruct aspects of their own identity. Through fiber and imagery, López explores accessibility, queerness, gender identity, Blackness, and Latinidad, while also fully embracing absurdity and Black Existentialism and challenging the macabre.
In addition to their art practice, Wit has been an independent consultant in arts administration, community archiving, and museum leadership for 14 years. They are the founder and artistic director of Till Arts Project, which is committed to providing resources for LGBTQ+ artists and creators to make and exhibit their work and to network and collaborate with each other. Till Arts also seeks to improve inclusion and equity in the future of the arts and culture sector by giving LGBTQ+ youth the tools and hands-on training they need to be organizers and leaders in the fields of arts advocacy and arts management.
López is also a community archivist, art collector, and radical social change philanthropist who believes in the power that funding has to strengthen the art practices of artists from populations that have been historically, systematically marginalized.
Panelists:
Paul Ramírez Jonas (Artist, Professor, Art Department Chair at Cornell University)
Paul Ramírez Jonas was born in Pomona, California and raised in Honduras. Educated at Brown University (BA, 1987) and Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1989), he currently lives and works in Ithaca NY. Paul Ramírez Jonas selected solo exhibitions include Museo Jumex, Mexico City; The New Museum, NYC; Pinacoteca do Estado, Sao Paulo; The Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Connecticut; The Blanton Museum, Texas; a survey at Ikon Gallery (UK) and Cornerhouse (UK) in 2004, and a 25 year survey at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston in 2017. Selected group exhibitions at P.S.1; the Brooklyn Museum; The Whitechapel (UK); Irish Museum of Modern Art (Ireland); and Kunsthaus Zurich. He participated in the 1st Johannesburg Biennale; 1st Seoul Biennial; 6th Shanghai Biennial; 28th Sao Paulo Biennial; 53rd Venice Biennial and 7th and 10th Bienal do Mercosul. In 2010 his Key to the City project was presented by Creative Time in cooperation with the City of New York and in 2022 with Fierce and Birmingham 2022 Festival in Birmingham, UK. In 2016 his Public Trust project was presented by Now & There in Boston. He is a Professor and Art Department Chair, at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University. His most recent project, a large-scale participatory monument, was installed in the National Mall in Washington DC in the summer of 2023 in an exhibition curated by Monument Lab.
Laura Huerta Migus (Deputy Director, Office of Museum Services, Institute of Museum and Library Services)
Laura Huerta Migus was appointed Deputy Director, Office of Museum Services, at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in July 2021. IMLS is an independent federal agency and the largest source of federal funding for libraries and museums. Throughout her career, Laura has been devoted to the growth and education of children, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities, through community-based and informal learning environments.
In 2018, Laura was named as an Ascend Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and in 2016, she was recognized as a Champion of Change for Summer Opportunity by the White House. She is a noted speaker and author on topics of equity and audience-focused museum practice for institutions including the Board of Science Education of the National Academies of Sciences, the U.S. Play Coalition, and various university texts.
Previously, she served as the Executive Director of the Association of Children's Museums and Director of Professional Development and Equity Initiatives at the Association of Science-Technology Centers, Inc. She completed her undergraduate studies at Texas A&M University and completed a Master's degree from Saint Joseph’s University.
Panel – Mapping Memory: Communing with the Landscape
2:50 PM–3:50 PM
Poem:
Imani Jacqueline Brown, “Black Ecologies: an opening, an offering” (excerpt)
(Artist, Activist, Writer, Architectural Researcher, Monument Lab Fellow 2024)
Imani Jacqueline Brown is an artist, activist, writer, and architectural researcher from New Orleans, based between London and New Orleans. Her work investigates the “continuum of extractivism,” which spans from settler-colonial genocide and slavery to fossil fuel production and climate change.
In exposing the layers of violence and resistance that form the foundations of settler-colonial society, she opens space to imagine paths to ecological reparations.
Imani's practice combines photography, videography, archival research, ecological philosophy, legal theory, people’s history, remote sensing, and counter-cartographic strategies to disentangle the spatial logics that make geographies, unmake communities, and break Earth’s geology. Her research is disseminated internationally through art installations, public actions, reports, and testimony delivered to courts and organs of the United Nations.
Among other things, Imani is currently a PhD candidate in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, a research fellow with Forensic Architecture, and an associate lecturer in MA Architecture at the Royal College of Arts.
Moderator:
Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Art Historian, Writer, Co-Curator, Declaration House)
Anna Arabindan-Kesson is an Associate professor of Black Diasporic art with a joint appointment in the Departments of African American Studies and Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. She practiced as a Registered Nurse before she became an academic, and her work focuses on art, race, medicine and migration.
Panelists:
Niya Bates (PhD Candidate, History and African American Studies at Princeton University)
Niya Bates is a PhD candidate in History and African American Studies at Princeton University. She studies 19th and 20th century U.S. history, global environmentalism, and rural cultural landscapes. Her dissertation seeks to connect rural Black cultural landscapes in 19th century Appalachia to global traditions of marronage, and to explore the 20th century legacies of those communities. Prior to coming to Princeton, Niya worked in public history preserving rural African American culture and historic sites in central Virginia and founded the Scuffletown Project to continue this work. She also served as the director of African American history and the Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Bates has been a guest on several podcasts and streaming platforms including Netflix’s High on the Hog, Oprah's Book Club, Monty Don's American Gardens, NPR's All Things Considered, and Following Harriet. She earned a B.A. in African and African American Studies and an M.A. in Architectural History with a certificate in Historic Preservation from the University of Virginia.
Niya was born and raised in central Virginia and is a descendant of families who were enslaved in that area. In her free time, she enjoys learning about all aspects of the wine industry as a member of the Oenoverse Club at Blenheim Vineyards, traveling, and listening to live music.
Joy Banner (Co-Founder and Co-Director, The Descendants Project)
Dr. Joy Banner is Co-Founder and Co-Director of The Descendants Project, a nonprofit foundation committed to the liberation of the Black descendant community through the dismantling of inequitable and discriminatory economic, environmental, and social systems inherent in the violent legacies of slavery. As part of this work, Dr. Banner is on the front lines of the struggle against environmental racism in the form of petrochemical plants along Louisiana’s River Road, otherwise known as “Cancer Alley.” Joy is a proud member of the local descendant community with rooted ancestry that can be traced to the 18th century. She also served as the former Director of Communications of Whitney Plantation, the only plantation museum in Louisiana that centers the lives of the enslaved, and is a descendant of those enslaved at Whitney Plantation. Joy has used her 20+ years in heritage and tourism to champion the preservation of Black historic sites, heritage, and communities. Dr. Banner is the 2023 recipient of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Emerging Leader Award.
Jo Banner (Co-Founder and Co-Director, The Descendants Project)
Jo Banner’s deep connection to her heritage and love for her home state of Louisiana has driven her to create significant positive change in her community and beyond. Through her organization, The Descendants Project, she is preserving and celebrating her Afro-Creole heritage and actively working to challenge exploitative systems and protect Louisiana's people's environment and well-being.
Her focus on gaining recognition for the burial grounds of the enslaved as sacred sites highlights her commitment to acknowledging the historical injustices that have taken place and honoring the lives of those who suffered. This work is crucial for fostering healing and understanding in the community.
Jo's advocacy for environmental justice is particularly significant as she lives in an area disproportionately affected by heavy industry and petrochemicals, now infamously known as Cancer Alley. By championing this cause and developing strategies to transform land into green spaces, she addresses immediate environmental concerns and strives to create a healthier and more vibrant future for her community.
Speaking before the United Nations and participating in negotiations for a treaty to combat plastic and marine pollution demonstrates Jo's ability to amplify her advocacy on a global scale. Her efforts to engage with industries such as entertainment and tourism to create alternative job opportunities outside of the petrochemical sector showcase her innovative approach to sustainable economic development.
Panel – Courage & Healing: What Do We Do With the Ghosts?
4:10 PM–5:10 PM
Poem:
Fady Joudah, “Dear […]” (Poet, Physician, 2024 Monument Lab Fellow)
Fady Joudah is the author of […]. He has also published six collections of poems: The Earth in the Attic; Alight; Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance; and Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.
Moderator:
Arielle Julia Brown (Performance Curator and Cultural Producer, Black Spatial Relics)
Arielle Julia Brown is a multidisciplinary cultural worker who commands and directs cultural spaces as sites for radical imagination, vision building and social transformation in her communities.
Raised between Hayward California and Conley Georgia by her beloved migratory people, Arielle now also calls Philadelphia, PA home. Arielle’s practices traverse cultural strategy, performance curation, dramaturgy, facilitation and performance making. Arielle’s work as a cultural worker calls forward spaces for truthtelling the likes of which continue to make expansive space for Beloved Community. Across her efforts, Arielle is committed to supporting and creating Black performance work that commands imaginative and material space for social transformation.
Woven throughout her cultural work, Arielle teaches and facilitates workshops across various cultural and academic spaces. As a facilitator she has been most transformed by her work on The Love Balm Project, a workshop series and performance that centers the testimonies of mothers who have lost children to systemic violence (2010 -2015 - more information below). Additionally, Arielle has taught performance at; Destiny Arts Center, Streetside Stories, Eastside Arts Alliance and Liberation Songs (at Morehouse College). She has been a guest lecturer at the Pomona College Department of Theatre and Dance. Arielle has facilitated workshops and or served on panels at Open Engagement, Common Field, Highlander Homecoming, ROOTS Weekend Atlanta, Theatre Bay Area Conference, College Art Association Conference, Alliance of Artist Communities, ASWAD and several others. Recent dramaturgy credits include What We Ask of Flesh by Christal Brown/INSPIRIT (Jacobs Pillow Residency, The Kennedy Center 2022) Grounds That Shout curated by Reggie Wilson (Philadelphia Contemporary 2019), Salt Pepper Ketchup by Josh Wilder (Interact Theatre/ Passages Theatre 2018).
Arielle was recognized by Intersection for the Arts as a 2014 Changemaker. She was a Mellon Artistic Leadership Fellow for the 2014 Encuentro at LATC. She was a 2017-2018 Inaugural Diversity and Leadership Fellow at Alliance of Artists Communities. Arielle was a 2019 Monument Lab National Fellow. Arielle is a 2021 Leeway Transformation Awardee. Arielle is in the inaugural cohort (2021 -2024) of Called By Water conceived and led by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones and Sharon Bridgforth. Arielle received her B.A. in Theatre from Pomona College and holds an M.A. in Public Humanities from Brown University where she was the 2015-2017 Public History of Slavery Graduate Fellow with the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
Panelists: Michelle Browder (Artist, Activist, Creator of Mothers of Gynecology Monument)
Michelle Browder is a native of Denver, Colorado. At the age 7, Michelle and her family moved to rural Verbena, Alabama in the late 70’s. Michelle experienced bullying through racial bias at an early age. Outspoken as a child, Michelle began combating her attackers through physical confrontations leading to multiple suspensions. During her last suspension, Michelle’s father gave her an ultimatum, “Prison or Art.” He challenged her to seize the moment to be creative. At the age of 13, Michelle harnessed her entrepreneurial spirit and started a hand painted T-shirt business. After graduation, she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and attended the Art Institute of Atlanta, studying Graphic Design and Visual Communications.
For nearly 35 years, Michelle has used art, history, and “real talk” conversations to mentor marginalized and disfavored students through visual arts and spoken word. She has created and branded art diversion programs used by juvenile detention centers in Atlanta, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama.
Michelle’s art has been shown in galleries across the country, notably the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She has painted for Tyler Perry, Denzel Washington, and countless other stars. She opened a gallery and restaurant called PJR’S FISH AND BBQ RESTAURANT that employed high school students, returning citizens, and the homeless. Michelle has traveled across the country speaking and motivating our children to be More Than a statistic, generalization, or stereotype. She challenges all children and students to defy the odds of victimization.
Today, Michelle is the founder and director of I AM MORE THAN...Youth Empowerment Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. She owns and operates More Than Tours, a social business providing educational tours for nearly 10,000 underserved students in marginalized communities of color. Michelle’s mission is simple, “Exposing Our Children To The Truth, Will Give Them Access To A Seat At The Table.” Michelle is the artist and creator of The Mothers of Gynecology Monument Park and The More Up Campus located in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. We’re using ART, HISTORY, AND COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS TO CHANGE FALSE NARRATIVES centered in maternal health and infant mortality.
Cannupa Hanska Luger (Artist, Monument Lab Fellow 2024)
Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico based multidisciplinary artist creating monumental installations, sculpture and performance to communicate urgent stories of 21st Century Indigeneity. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. Luger’s bold visual storytelling presents new ways of seeing our collective humanity while foregrounding an Indigenous worldview. His work has been exhibited at The National Gallery of Art, DC, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Gardiner Museum, Toronto and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Georgia. Luger has been awarded fellowships from Guggenheim, United States Artists, Creative Capital, Smithsonian and Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Patrick Weems (Executive Director, Emmett Till Interpretive Center)
A community builder, social entrepreneur and philanthropy leader, Patrick Weems is setting a path toward restorative justice and racial healing. With more than 10 years of experience in racial justice and restorative justice work, Patrick is leading transformational change that will last through the generations. He co-founded the Summer Youth Institute, an experiential learning youth program for the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. He also co-founded and serves as director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, which uses art and storytelling to share the Emmett Till tragedy, facilitate racial healing and point us toward a new future. A graduate of the University of Mississippi, he holds a master’s degree from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. He was recently awarded a prestigious Fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and is a Monument Lab Fellow.
Keynote Conversation – From Declaration to Reclamation & Back
5:30 PM–7:00 PM
Poem & Moderator: Yolanda Wisher (Senior Curator, Monument Lab)
Monument Lab Senior Curator Yolanda Wisher is a poet, musician, educator, and the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014). Wisher holds an M.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from Temple University and a B.A. in English and Black Studies and an honorary doctorate from her alma mater Lafayette College. Wisher was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1999 and the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia for 2016 and 2017. She currently serves as the chair of the Philadelphia Poet Laureate Governing Committee. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, Wisher received the Leeway Foundation's Transformation Award in 2019 for her commitment to art for social change and was named a Philadelphia Cultural Treasures Artist Fellow in 2022. Wisher performs a blend of poetry and song with her band Yolanda Wisher & The Afroeaters; their debut album Doublehanded Suite was released in 2022. Wisher taught high school English for a decade, co-founded the youth-led Germantown Poetry Festival, and served as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts. She is also the founder of the School of Guerrilla Poetics, a training ground for folks interested in nurturing and mobilizing communities through poetry. Along with Trapeta B. Mayson, Wisher leads ConsenSIS (consensisphl.com), an initiative that seeks to count, gather, and memorialize Black femme poets in the Philadelphia area. Wisher’s curatorial work includes Declaration House in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park (2024) with Anna Arabindan-Kesson and Paul Farber.
Keynote Speakers:
Sonya Clark (Lead Artist, Declaration House)
Sonya Clark is Professor of Art at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Previously, she was a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of the Arts and Commonwealth Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University where she served as chair of the Craft/Material Studies Department from 2006 until 2017. In 2016, she was awarded a university-wide VCU Distinguished Scholars Award. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and was honored with their Distinguished Alumni Award in 2011. She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first college degree is a BA from Amherst College where she received an honorary doctorate in 2015. Her work has been exhibited in over 350 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. She is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, a Pollock Krasner award, an 1858 Prize, an Art Prize Grand Jurors Award, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award.
Dr. Jane Kamensky (President, Thomas Jefferson Foundation)
Dr. Jane Kamensky serves as president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private nonprofit that owns and operates Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia.
For thirty years, Kamensky worked as a professor and higher education leader. Before joining Monticello, she served as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In her years as Director of the Schlesinger Library, Kamensky successfully worked to raise the profile of the library to the most preeminent of its kind in the world by partnering with an international network of diverse scholars and thought leaders.
Kamensky is the author or editor of numerous books, including A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (2016), which won four major prizes and was a finalist for several others; and the authoritative Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, co-edited with the late Edward G. Gray. Her most recent book, Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution, was published by W.W. Norton in March 2024.
A former Commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Kamensky serves as a Trustee of the Museum of the American Revolution, a member of the National Advisory Council of More Perfect, and as one of the principal investigators on the NEH/Department of Education-funded initiative, Educating for American Democracy, among many other public history roles.
Expo Presenters
Art Star Craft Bazaar
Thursday, July 18 and Friday, July 19, 9am-6pm
Art Star Craft Bazaar represents working studio artists and crafters from the Philadelphia area and beyond. All items are handcrafted within the US by individual artists or small production studios.
BlackStar
Friday, July 19 ONLY, 10am-2pm
BlackStar creates the spaces and resources needed to uplift the work of Black, Brown and Indigenous artists working outside of the confines of genre.
Dream Poet for Hire
Thursday, July 18 and Friday, July 19, 10am-6pm
Equipped with a Smith-Corona typewriter, poet Marshall James Kavanaugh will create on-the-spot poems based on the theme “Past Is Presence” and invite visitors to add their own verse to a monumental community poem on a public typewriter.
Getting Word African American Oral History Project
Thursday, July 18 ONLY, 10am-2pm
The Getting Word African American Oral History Project preserves the histories of Monticello’s enslaved families and their descendants.
Love Now Media
Thursday, July 18 and Friday, July 19, 9am-6pm
Love Now Media is on a mission to help create a more just, well, and equitable future by amplifying acts of love at the intersection of social justice, wellness, and equity.
The Majestic Photobooth
Thursday, July 18 and Friday, July 19, 9am-6pm
The Classic Majestic Photobooth is modeled after the original vintage photo booth.
Monument Lab
Thursday, July 18 and Friday, July 19, 9am-6pm
Monument Lab is a nonprofit public art, history, and design studio that is a leading voice in how monuments live with us in public spaces.
Mural Arts Philadelphia
Thursday, July 18 and Friday, July 19, 9am-6pm
Mural Arts Philadelphia is the nation’s largest public art program, dedicated to the belief that art ignites change.