Black Paris Talk Series Comes to Five US Cities

Explore the Centre Pompidou’s major upcoming exhibition, Black Paris (2025) and the connection between the Atlanta art scene and Paris in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Panelists include Cheryl Finley, Walton Endowed Professor and Director, AUC Art Collective, Spelman College, Alicia Knock, Head curator for the Contemporary Creation and Prospective Department at Centre Pompidou and Villa Albertine resident, and Fahamu Pecou, artist and founding Director of African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA).

This kickoff session of the new Black Paris Talk Series is organized in collaboration with the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA).

Explore Ming Smith’s work at a symposium running parralel to Ming Smith: Jazz Requiem – Notations in Blue, on view at The Gund at Kenyon College until December 15, 2024.

Alicia Knock, Head curator for the Contemporary Creation and Prospective Department at Centre Pompidou and Villa Albertine resident, will deliver a lecture connecting Smith’s work to her research for the upcoming Black Paris exhibition at the Centre Pompidou.

This second session of the Black Paris Talk Series is organized in collaboration with The Gund at Kenyon College.

Hosted from November 14-16, 2024, the symposium draws inspiration from the exhibition, reflecting on American artist Ming Smith’s early, formative years traveling through Europe, exploring how these experiences have shaped her practice and continue to influence her recent work.

Other special guests include photographer Ming Smith, writer Jacqueline Woodson, essayist and poet Hanif Abdurraqib, Kenyon Review editor Nicole Dutton, and several esteemed campus partners.

During her groundbreaking career, Lois Mailou Jones traversed diverse cultural landscapes and artistic styles. Her engagement with the arts of Africa and the Caribbean began in 1930s Paris, a theme of the current exhibition Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900–1939.

Jones’ art and legacy will be the focus of a conversation moderated by the exhibition curator, Robyn Asleson, with guest speakers Carol Rhodes Dyson, adjunct professor of art history at Howard University; Alicia Knock, Head curator for the Contemporary Creation and Prospective Department at Centre Pompidou; and Kelly-Christina Grant, 2023-2024 Terra Foundation for American Art Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art and Villa Albertine resident.

This third session of the Black Paris Talk Series is a joint program of the National Portrait Gallery and Villa Albertine.

Explore the changing artistic, political, and personal strategies employed by Black artists between Africa, United States, and France, as they sought to navigate historical and artistic transformations, starting from the post-World War II period.

The conversation will feature Denise Murrell, curator of the The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Alicia Knock, Head curator for the Contemporary Creation and Prospective Department at Centre Pompidou in charge of the upcoming Paris Noir exhibition at Centre Pompidou (Spring 2025) and Villa Albertine resident, and Kimberli Gant, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Brooklyn Museum, in connection with her 2022-2023 traveling exhibition Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence & the Mbari Club. 

Explore the rich historical and creative ties between New Orleans and Paris over the past century, from New Orleans native Ed Clark, a pioneering abstract artist of the 20th and 21st centuries, to today’s most prominent artists, scholars, and culture bearers.

Panelists include Alicia Knock, Head curator for the Contemporary Creation and Prospective Department at Centre Pompidou, Kim Vaz-Deville, Scholar in Residence at Dillard University with focus on Black Carnaval Studies, Darryl Montana, Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters. Moderated by curator Anne Collins Smith.

This last session of the Black paris Talk Series is organized in collaboration with Xavier University Art Gallery and Art and Performance Studies Department, Xavier University of Louisiana Library, and the Consulate General of France in New Orleans.

In New Orleans, Alicia Knock’s itinerary includes a tour of Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration at the Historic New Orleans Collection and Williams Research Center In New Orleans, guided by curators Eric Seiferth and Libby Neidenbach, followed by a visit to the archives. Knock will also explore the Amistad Research Center, meeting with Director Kathe Hambrick, Dr. Maurita Poole, director of Newcomb Museum of Art, and will connect with Nick Stillman, Executive Director of Prospect, as well as tour the Joan Mitchell Center to engage with resident artists.

At Xavier University, she’ll meet with university leadership to discuss potential partnerships and host a discussion on curatorial practice with students from Xavier, Dillard, Loyola, and Tulane.

Knock’s agenda includes visiting the Backstreet Cultural Museum and the Musée f.p.c. (dedicated to New Orleans’ Free People of Color).