Join art historian Dr. Cheryl Finley and artist Daesha Devón Harris for a conversation about Harris’s artistic practice, Finley’s curatorial work, and how the two intersect in the current exhibition Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory.

Dr. Cheryl Finley is the Walton Endowed Professor and Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective at Spelman College. She retired last year from Cornell’s History of Art Department after an illustrious twenty-year career. An award-winning author and specialist in art markets, photography and African diaspora art history, Dr. Finley’s current research examines the global art economy, focusing on the relationship among artists, museums, patrons, biennials, and institution-building in the project Black Art Futures.

Daesha Devón Harris is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work probes the interstices of narrative, history, the politics of place, and the greater African diaspora, intertwined with photography, mixed media, text, and video. The gentrification of her hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York, and its effect on the local Black community has played a major role in both her advocacy and artwork. Harris holds a BFA in Studio Art from the College of Saint Rose, and a MFA in Visual Art from the University at Buffalo, and her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States.

All are encouraged to visit the exhibition (in the Bartels Gallery on Floor 1L) prior to the program. The exhibition will also be open after the program during a public reception, free and open to all.

This talk has been made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and supported by the Milman Endowment for Education and Ames Mellon Endowment for Education.