Join us for a conversation between renowned artist Dawoud Bey and PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans that will center around Bey’s projects from 2012 to 2021. Bey’s recent projects engage in a reimagining of the African American past and situate them in a contemporary conversation, making clear how the past continues to inform and shape the present. Two of Bey’s photographs, Wallace Simmons and Eric Allums, Birmingham, AL, and Cabin and Palm Trees were recently acquired by the museum by way of the generous support of the PAMM Fund for Black Art.

About Dawoud Bey
MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey began his career in 1975 with a series of photographs, “Harlem, USA,” that were later exhibited in his first one-person exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. His work has since been the subject of numerous exhibitions and retrospectives at museums and galleries worldwide.

His recent retrospective exhibition, Dawoud Bey: An American Project, opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2020 and traveled to the High Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His work has been the subject of several monographic publications, and his writings have appeared in a range of publications.

His recent projects “The Birmingham Project,” “Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” and “In This Here Place” engage in a reimagining of the African American past, and situates them in a contemporary conversation, making clear how the past continues to inform and shape the present.

In addition to the McArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Bey is the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Howard University among many other awards and honors.

Bey has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University School of Art and is currently Professor of Art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago, where he has taught since 1998.