Conversation on Art and Racial & Social Justice w/ Angela Davis & artist Isaac Julien

Wed, Nov 11, 2020 • 6pm–7pm

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 social justice movements. The program is moderated by Sarah Lewis, associate professor of history of art and architecture and African and African American studies at Harvard University.

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 West Coast premiere of "Lessons of the Hour" 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.

This conversation is co-presented by the McEvoy Foundation of the Arts, Museum of the African Diaspora SF, and the San Francisco Public Library.