Composing the Radical Lives of Kathleen Neal Cleaver
Team
curatorial Team
Stephanie Alvarado, co-curator
Stephanie is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, community organizer, and photo archivist born and raised in the Bronx, New York by way of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Stephanie has fifteen years of work experience doing audience engagement programming, policy advocacy research, curriculum development, archival research, and creative facilitation. Stephanie received a BA from NYU in Psychology, Latino Studies, and Public Policy and an MA in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University.
Lia T. BaScomb, co-curator
Lia T. Bascomb is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies, and affiliated with the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at Georgia State University. At Yale and UC Berkeley, she was trained as an interdisciplinary Black studies scholar with emphases in diaspora theory, cultural theory, visual culture, performance studies, gender and sexuality, and literature. Her scholarly interests focus on representations and performances of nation, gender, and sexuality across the African diaspora with an emphasis on the Anglophone Caribbean. She has published in journals such as Meridians, Souls, Palimpsest, Anthurium, African and Black Diaspora, and the Black Scholar. She has a chapter in the collection Black Sexual Economies: Race and Sex in a Culture of Capital, and her book In Plenty and In Time of Need: Popular Culture and the Remapping of Barbadian Identity, is part of Rutgers University Press’s Critical Caribbean Studies Series.
sierra king, co-curator
Sierra King (she/her) is an Atlanta-based artist, photographer, and archivist. Her creative and arts administration work is dedicated to documenting, preserving, and archiving the work of Black women artists. She had the honor of working as lead photo archivist for the Kathleen Cleaver papers before they were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Library at Emory University. In 2020, King was awarded the Stuart A. Rose Library’s Billops-Hatch Fellowship to continue research for Build Your Archive, an interactive assessment plan to help Black women artists build their archives in real time. She is currently building and preserving the archives of printmaker Jasmine Nicole Williams and film director Ebony Blanding. In the summer of 2020, King made her curatorial debut with here.there.everywhere, a multidimensional portrait of the journey towards Black futurity that Black women across the African Diaspora have been pursuing in the name of freedom, at MINT Gallery. In 2021, she is a Hambidge Cross-Pollination Art Lab Studio Resident and National Black Arts Festival Micro-Grant Recipient. As of September 2022, she is one of 10 Atlanta based artists and scholars to be awarded the Arts and Justice Fellowship by Emory Arts and the Ethics and the Arts program of the Emory University Center for Ethics.
DELPHINE SIMS, co-curator
Delphine Sims is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley, where she studies the history of photography in the Americas and the African Diaspora. Her research focuses on the ways in which race, gender, geography, and urbanity inform landscape photography. She previously worked at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art as the Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Photography. There, she organized exhibitions on subjects such as the history of salted paper prints, California landscape photography, mid-20th-century Mexican photography, and contemporary American photography. She has contributed writings to Laurie Brown: Earth Edges (California Museum of Photography, 2016), 75 in 25: Important Acquisitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1990-2015, (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2016) and Looking In, Looking Out: Latin American Photography (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2015). Most recently she worked as a Research Assistant assessing the photography collection of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
John Stephens, co-curator
John Stephens is a visual artist who uses photography and writing to tell compelling stories that connect and relate to the human journey. Stephens is originally from Atlanta, GA, and is a self-taught photographer. He pulls his inspiration from spirituality, music, history, literature and present day culture. He has been working in his craft for over 20 years and has been voted Best of Atlanta for his professional service for the past 4 years. His work has been displayed in the AfroFuturism Rising exhibition at the Tubman African American Museum. Creatively he is driven by the ethos that, "we are all interconnected in ways that can extend our reach as artists, but more importantly as human beings." John assited with efforts to digitize the Kathleen Cleaver Papers before they were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Library at Emory University.
Jennifer M. williams, Project Manager
Jennifer M. Williams (she/her) has more than 13 years years of experience producing multidisciplinary public arts programs. She is the Programs & Marketing Manager for National Black Arts (NBAF) in Atlanta. Previously, Williams has held positions at Alternate ROOTS, Art Papers, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Prospect.4. As an independent visual arts curator organizing exhibitions & performances, Jennifer is committed to contributing to the cultural and artistic landscape locally, regionally, and internationally. She served as Director and Curator of the George and Leah McKenna Museum of African-American Art in New Orleans for six years. She supports and serves on various committees and boards, including Junebug Productions and A Black Creative’s Guide. She has participated in and led a variety of experiences, including the Lagos Biennial Curatorial Intensive and the Urban Bush Women Leadership Institute. Jennifer received her B.A. in History from Georgia State University.
collaborators, advisors, and Past Team Members
Clint Fluker - dir. of culture, community, and partner engagement, EMory University
jonathan gayles - Professor, georgia state University
leigh raiford - project director (2016-2020) and consultant; Professor, UC-Berkeley
Holly smith - archivist, spelman college
Pellom McDanielS III - former Curator, african American collections, EMory’s rose library