Talks & Conversations

Artist Talk: Ming Smith

Ming Smith, Sun Ra Space II, New York, New York, 1978, gelatin silver print, Charina Endowment Fund, 2017.42.1

In honor of the closing weekend of Photography and the Black Arts Movement: 1955-1985, join us for a conversation between exhibition artist Ming Smith and exhibition co-curator Philip Brookman. Their discussion will explore Smith’s creative practice and engagement with the Black Arts Movement. Smith’s works Prelude to Middle Passage (Île de Gorée, Senegal) and Sun Ra Space II, New York, New York are on view in the exhibition, which is the first to consider photography’s impact on a cultural and aesthetic movement that celebrated Black history, identity, and beauty.

This program is made possible by the James D. and Kathryn K. Steele Fund for Photography.

Ming Smith

artist

Ming Smith is a Harlem-based, Detroit-born artist. An alumna of Howard University, she was the first female member to join Kamoinge, a collective of Black photographers in New York in the 1960s working to document Black life. Smith would go on to be the first Black woman photographer to be included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Smith’s work was recently included in Soul of a Nation at Tate Modern in collaboration with the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges, and The Broad. Her work was also featured in the Brooklyn Museum’s We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 and MoMA’s 2010 seminal exhibition, Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. 

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