Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)

Save the date for the June Blatant program with Patrisse Cullors in conversation Ashara Ekundayo!

Museum of the African Diaspora, Black Public Media and CubaCaribe present African Diaspora Film Club at MoAD | BAKOSÓ: AFROBEATS DE CUBA When: this Sunday, May 16, 2021 @ 5:00 pm 6:00 pm Sign-up up to join us live via Zoom at // www.moadsf.org/calendar/... BAKOSÓ is streaming on PBS, you can view the film in advance of the discussion through the link on our website at // www.moadsf.com/calendar/ Join the conversation with our host Cornelius Moore along with Producer and Director Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi. @bakoso_cuba What does Está Rico by Marc Anthony, Will Smith & Bad Bunny have in common with Made For Now by Janet Jackson x Daddy Yankee? They both high-jacked AfroBeats and did not give the genre’s origin props. Bakosó is a film that does the opposite, following DJ Jigüe to his hometown of Santiago de Cuba to find inspiration from the new sounds. He finds Afrobeats has helped create a new genre of music called Bakosó, which itself is beautiful proof that the exchange between Cuba and Africa did not end with the transatlantic slave trade. Through stunning visuals and a score created by the founders of the genre, the film shows the technology, culture and landscape that shape this African-Caribbean fusion. Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi is a graduate of UC Berkeley. He received his MA degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Eli is an internationally-recognized and award-winning filmmaker. He is the co-founder and director of FistUp.TV, an international media platform uplifting and telling stories from underrepresented communities across the world. His work has circulated through National Broadcast: Free Speech TV, Teaching Channel, and PBS. Currently, Eli lives in Puerto Rico and is working on his new film We Still Here, a story of resilience and recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane María. His dedication to his craft is deeply connected to his commitment to social justice and the belief in the transformative power of film. See more

Chef-in-Residence Bryant Terry presents | Choppin’ It Up with MoAD ft. guest Gregory Gourdet Join us on Friday, May 14, 2021 @ 3:00 pm 4:00 pm LIVE on Instagram @moadsf Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, New York, Gregory Gourdet is the child of Haitian immigrants. A self-proclaimed health freak and avid runner, Gourdet views food as a source of nourishment as much as one of pleasure. After graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, he became ...chef de cuisine for Jean-Georges Vongerichten, under whom he trained for almost seven years. In 2008, Gourdet arrived in Portland, OR. He led the pan-Asian kitchen at Departure for a decade, running one of the busiest restaurants in the state. His annual trips around the world connected him with the flavors and ingredients he loves so much. He is a James Beard Award nominee and a two-time Top Chef finalist as well as an All Star and Guest Judge. He has been named Chef of the Year by Eater and one of the Fittest Chefs in America by Men’s Health. His first book, Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health, came out in May 2021. His wood-fired Haitian restaurant Kann will open in Portland, OR, in 2022. See more

In the Artist’s Studio | @helina.metaferia Sign-up up to join us live via Zoom at // www.moadsf.org/calendar/ When // May 19, 2021 @ 1:00 pm 2:15 pm... Join MoAD staff members as we visit some of our favorite artists in their studios to see what they’re currently working on and how their work is changing as a result of the quarantine. This is a rare opportunity to hear from artists directly from their studios. We will follow all talks with an audience Q&A. Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Join MoAD in celebrating the publication of I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land with author Alaina E. Roberts in conversation with Professor Robert Keith Collins, PhD. Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of 40 acres and a mulethe lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I’ve Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the Americ...an settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from. Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion on to Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma Statehood in 1907.

Artist Opportunity: Port of San Francisco seeks partners to activate open spaces (artists encouraged to apply) here: https://sfport.com/PopUpRFQ

Join MoAD Docents in an informal conversation about early African American sculptures.

When I went to Brazil it felt like home because I see black people everywhere, I see the same food, I see the same culture. I wanted to find out why. Oumar Diouf, chef/owner The Damel The Damel in #Oakland, celebrates Senegalese and Afro-Latino fusion with vibrant food. Watch the first episode of the new KQED series #DishesoftheDiaspora.

This Thursday: MoAD Docents look at sculptures by #BlackArtists from the 19th and 20th Century. They searched several digital public domain archives to bring you selected works, and they invite you to join their conversation via chat as they discuss esthetics, cultural context, and the artists’ captivating lives. RSVP today for Thursday, February 11, 2021 @ 2:00 pm 3:00PM PT at moadsf.org/calendar.

Join California College of the Arts professor Jacqueline Francis, for this four-session seminar examining the art and artists of the Black Atlantic (a geographic formation including Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe) with an emphasis on aesthetic objects produced by African and/or African-descended peoples. Each session will build upon content presented in the previous session, so we ask attendees to register for and attend all four sessions.

In honor of #BlackHistoryMonth, we’re joining @KQED in hosting their first-ever drive-in for an evening lifting up Black storytelling through beloved communities, cinema and song RSVP http://bit.ly/KQEDHostsALoveSupreme

This Week: Join Roberto Lugo in our Virtual Studio livestream this Wednesday, December 16 with our RSVP available now at moadsf.org/calendar! #RobertoLugo is an American artist, ceramicist, social activist, poet, and educator. Lugo uses porcelain as his medium of choice, illuminating its aristocratic surface with imagery of poverty, inequality, and social and racial injustice. Lugo’s works are multicultural mash-ups, traditional European and Asian porcelain forms and techniques reimagined with a 21st-century street sensibility. Lugo is the recipient of the 2019 Rome Prize, and was awarded a 2019 Pew Fellowship. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, The Walters Museum of Art, and more.

Join us as we discuss the long and remarkable life of Dr. William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B) Du Bois #WEBDubois! (1868-1963) Du Bois offers unique insights into an eventful century in African American history. Born three years after the end of the Civil War, Du Bois witnessed the imposition of Jim Crow, its defeat by the Civil Rights Movement and the triumph of African independence struggles. Du Bois was the consummate scholar-activist whose path-breaking works remain among the... most significant and articulate ever produced on the subject of race. His contributions and legacy have been so far-reaching, that this, his first film biography, required the collaboration of four prominent African American writers. Wesley Brown, Thulani Davis, Toni Cade Bambara and Amiri Baraka narrate successive periods of Du Bois’ life and discuss its impact on their work. Join us for our monthly series, The African Diaspora Film Club. Modeled after our African Book Club, we will meet once a month to discuss a film that we have all viewed in advance of the discussion. The conversation will be moderated by Cornelius Moore, co-director of California Newsreel and film series curator at MoAD. We will be choosing a selection of films previously screened at MoAD. RSVP today at moadsf.org/calendar now.

Thrilled for our next installment of BLATANT, a forum and live zine series that centers the lived experiences and radical imagination of #Blackwomenartists and cultural workers creating across discipline and geography. This month @blublakwomyn will be in conversation with Karen Seneferu and PheOnix RuachShaddai on TUES, Dec 15th, 4-5:15 PM PT. RSVP today to join this conversation on visioning and creating #BlackFutures through #newmedia #VR, and #AR.... Karen Seneferu is a mixed-media artist and educator and the founder and Artistic Director of the exhibit The Black Woman Is God #TBWIG which has changed the artistic and cultural landscape of California art. Lady PheOnix is a curator of @universe.art and @universecontemporary. She is a leading voice for contemporary digital art and culture providing an essential platform for the art and artists of the of our time.

Join us for a conversation with host Sarah Ladipo Manyika and guest U.S. Senator Cory Booker on Conversations Across the Diaspora at MoAD.

In Friday’s IG live series, MoAD’s Chef-in-Residence Bryan Terry will talk to Adrian Lipscombe at 3PM PDT! Watch on Instagram, Facebook Live, & Youtube. Adrian Lipscombe, a native Texan, is the owner of Uptowne Café. She opened Uptowne Café restaurant on the Northside of La Crosse, WI to create a catalyst of urban change, and at the same time she works with the community to help revitalize the area. Uptowne is a hearth for the community and also a community impact space. It c...arries an open door policy and provides a safe haven to everyone in the community. Adrian’s food focuses on southern cuisines by using local ingredients and working with farmers in the Coulee Regional and Organic Valley area. Being a Southerner and using Midwest ingredients has provided a wonderful synergy of exploring cultures, foraging, and creating innovative dishes. Adrian draws her inspiration and storytelling through experiences from life and African American culinary history to tell the story of African American influence in our food culture today. She combines her experience in Southern food and desserts to bring honest food to the table to feed friends, family and the community. Currently Adrian is working on the 40 Acres Project. 40 Acres Project mission is to preserve the legacy of black agriculture and black foodways by the purchase of black owned land to practice tradition Black agriculture methods to provide resources for the food industry, create education opportunities, safe haven for historical archive information on traditional Black agriculture and foodways and provide partnership with organizations, Black farmers and the hospitality industry. See more

This talk is co-presented with Fraenkel Gallery New York-based artist Wardell Milan works in mixed media, combining elements of photography, drawing, painting, and collage. Milan’s practice is conceptually grounded in photography, often using photographs as initial inspiration behind composition of drawings and collages. Referencing artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus, Andres Serrano, Alec Soth, and Eugene Richards, Milan appropriates, and in some cases re-approp...riates the photographs, and thus the bodies depicted. Milan also uses images and objects to establish allegorical connections between history and contemporary events. Milan’s ongoing series Death, Wine, Revolt, which combines photography, drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture to explore themes of over-indulgence, destruction, and revolution. While earlier series such as Parisian Landscapes looked inward, to personal questions of freedom and desire, Milan made the works on view in response to the turmoil of the global moment. Works by the artist may be found in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Denver Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; UBS Art Collection; Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation, Paris; Hall Art Foundation; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Milan lives and works in New York. Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges and the Westridge Foundation This series is supported by the Facebook Art Department, UNTITLED, Art Fairs and The Art Report.

U.S. Senator for New Jersey Cory Booker joins us in conversation with author and host Sarah Ladipo Manyika this Friday! Register today at moadsf.org/calendar for Conversations Across the Diaspora this Friday, December 11 at 12:00-1:00 PM PT. Cory Booker believes that the American dream isn’t real for anyone unless it’s within reach of everyone. Booker has dedicated his life to fighting for those who have been left out, left behind, or left without a voice. Booker grew up in... northern #NewJersey and received his undergraduate degree from #StanfordUniversity. At Stanford, Booker played varsity football, volunteered for the campus peer counseling center, and wrote for the student newspaper. He was awarded a #RhodesScholarship and went on to study at the University of Oxford, and then Yale Law School, where he graduated in 1997. Instead of working for a corporate law firm, Booker moved to Newark after law school and started a #nonprofit organization to provide legal services for low-income families, helping tenants take on slumlords. In 1998, Booker moved into the Brick Towers housing project in Newark, where he lived until its demolition in 2006. Booker still lives in Newark’s Central Ward today, where the median household income is less than $15,000. Sarah Ladipo Manyika was raised in Nigeria and has lived in Kenya, France, Zimbabwe, and England. Sarah is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist and founding books editor for Ozy.com. Her debut novel, In Dependence, is an international bestseller while her second novel, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, has been translated into a number of languages. Her nonfiction includes personal essays and intimate profiles of people she meets from Mrs. Harris and Pastor Evan Mawarire to Toni Morrison, Margaret Busby and Michelle Obama. Sarah previously served on MoAD’s board and currently serves as Board Director for the women’s writing residency, Hedgebrook. This program series is made possible by the generous support of Peggy Woodford Forbes. Register today for live participation via Zoom. This event will also be livestreamed on Facebook Live and Youtube.

Join us for AFTER HOPE: ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION with Simone Bailey, Connie Zheng, Cheryl Derricotte, and Tiffany Chung, moderated by Padma Maitland.

October 28: We’re joining @wardell_milan to our Virtual Studio Session available now at moadsf.org/calendar! This talk is co-presented with Fraenkel Gallery! New York-based artist Wardell Milan works in mixed media, combining elements of photography, drawing, painting, and collage. Milan’s practice is conceptually grounded in photography, often using photographs as initial inspiration behind composition of drawings and collages. Referencing artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe..., Diane Arbus, Andres Serrano, Alec Soth, and Eugene Richards, Milan appropriates, and in some cases re-appropriates the photographs, and thus the bodies depicted. Milan also uses images and objects to establish allegorical connections between history and contemporary events. Milan’s ongoing series Death, Wine, Revolt, which combines photography, drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture to explore themes of over-indulgence, destruction, and revolution. While earlier series such as Parisian Landscapes looked inward, to personal questions of freedom and desire, Milan made the works on view in response to the turmoil of the global moment.

5/5 (fivefifths) is a multimedia collective co-founded by Tania Balan-Gaubert, Troy Chew, and Nkiruka Oparah during their MFA at California College of the Arts. 5/5 is dedicated to exploring Black(ness) as an idea, consciousness, reference, and embodied experience through space, language, and visual culture.

Our Online Museum Store has a brand new stack of books featuring #StayWoke: A People’s Guide to Making All #BlackLivesMatter, This Mournable Body, Living Lively: 80 Plant-Based Recipes to Activate Your Power and Feed Your Potential by Haile Thomas, and more! Find more books at store.moadsf.org.

October 28: We’re joining Wardell Milan to our Virtual Studio Session available now at moadsf.org/calendar. This talk is co-presented with Fraenkel Gallery! New York-based artist Wardell Milan works in mixed media, combining elements of photography, drawing, painting, and collage. Milan’s practice is conceptually grounded in photography, often using photographs as initial inspiration behind composition of drawings and collages. Referencing artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe,... Diane Arbus, Andres Serrano, Alec Soth, and Eugene Richards, Milan appropriates, and in some cases re-appropriates the photographs, and thus the bodies depicted. Milan also uses images and objects to establish allegorical connections between history and contemporary events. Milan’s ongoing series Death, Wine, Revolt, which combines photography, drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture to explore themes of over-indulgence, destruction, and revolution. While earlier series such as Parisian Landscapes looked inward, to personal questions of freedom and desire, Milan made the works on view in response to the turmoil of the global moment.

George McCalman is an artist and creative director of based in San Francisco. His design studio McCalmanCo brands companies and organizations. He is a culture columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. His first book, which he is illustrating and designing, is called Illustrated Black History, and will be published fall 2021 by Harper Collins. This program is made possible by the generous support of Kaiser Permanente.

October’s African Book Club selection is Silence is My Mother Tongue by #SulaimanAddonia. The author will join us on Sunday, October 25th to discuss the book with The African #BookClub. How to participate: Get a copy of the book, read it in advance of the meeting, and then discuss the book with a group of people interested in reading African literature online via zoom on October 25th at 5:00 PM. After you register in bio, you will receive information to join via zoom! About t...he Book A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction On a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos. For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inability to speak, must live vicariously through his sister. Both resist societal expectations by seeking to redefine love, sex, and gender roles in their lives, and when a businessman opens a shop and befriends Hagos, they cast off those pressures and make an unconventional choice. Order the book today at: https://store.moadsf.org//prod/silence-is-my-mother-tongue

Today’s In The Artist’s Studio virtual event features Sophia-Yemisi Adeyemo-Ross. Sophia’s portraits are love letters. Her work references photographs taken by missionary societies in West Africa at the start of the 20th century. These organizations were key players in the European economic and industrial efforts that used Christianity to obscure the exploitative practices of colonialism. However, Adeyemo-Ross is not seeking to center instances of cultural oppression, but r...ather, to express reverence and love for those who lived through the attempted erasure of African tradition. Grounded by the Yoruba interlace motif, a visual symbol that represents interconnectedness between this world and the ancestral realm, Adeyemo-Ross collages portraits of individuals from archival photographs onto imagined grounds. RSVP today at moadsf.org/calendar for Wednesday, October 21 at 1PM PDT. See more

Welcome to Blatant: A Forum on Art, Joy & Rage with Ashara Ekundayo in conversation with Amara Tabor Smith and Savannah Shange.

Sign up for our next In The Artist’s Studio session featuring Sophia-Yemisi Adeyemo-Ross! RSVP today in our bio for Wednesday, October 21. Sophia’s portraits are love letters. Her work references photographs taken by missionary societies in West Africa at the start of the 20th century. These organizations were key players in the European economic and industrial efforts that used Christianity to obscure the exploitative practices of colonialism. However, Adeyemo-Ross is not ...seeking to center instances of cultural oppression, but rather, to express reverence and love for those who lived through the attempted erasure of African tradition. Grounded by the Yoruba interlace motif, a visual symbol that represents interconnectedness between this world and the ancestral realm, Adeyemo-Ross collages portraits of individuals from archival photographs onto imagined grounds. RSVP today at moadsf.org/calendar.

Activist and scholar #AngelaDavis joins artist Isaac Julien for a conversation about the influence of #FrederickDouglass on contemporary movements for #racialjustice. Presented by McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco Public Library, and MoAD. Activist, educator, and author Angela Davis joins artist Isaac Julien to discuss his immersive, moving-image installation Lessons of the Hour and Frederick Douglass’ resonant voice in contemporary racial and #socialjustice movem...ents. Having helped to popularize the notion of a prison industrial complex, Davis now urges her audiences to consider the future possibility of a world without carceral systems and to help forge a twenty-first-century abolitionist movement. The program is moderated by Sarah Lewis, associate professor of history of art and architecture and African and African American studies at Harvard University. RSVP for the event at moadsf.org now for Wednesday, November 11th. The West Coast premiere of Lessons of the Hour at the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts includes an exhibition of Julien’s related photography and selections from the McEvoy Family Collection that further explore questions of identity, justice, history, and image-making in the film installation. New Labor Movements, a resonant original program of film and video shorts curated by Leila Weefur, explores contemporary visions of America and concepts of transnational Blackness. A series of online conversations with these artists and invited thinkers and scholars take place throughout the run of the exhibition.