Installation view, Terence Hammonds, Black Abolitionists Wallpaper Newark Museum of Art The Greek Slave

Installation view, Terence Hammonds, Black Abolitionists Wallpaper, 2022‑23 and Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, 1847. Seeing America: 18th‑19th Century, The Newark Museum of Art. Photo by Richard Goodbody.

Changing It Up: An American Art Convening

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Join us for a day of artist-led conversations and workshops exploring new approaches to American art and changing geographies in museum spaces.

Rethinking American Art Through Collaboration

Since the groundbreaking reinstallation of the Native American collection in 2016, The Newark Museum of Art (NMOA) has been actively shifting the boundaries of American art and museum practice. By curating collaboratively with artists, community members, and across our global collections, the Museum is committed to expanding the canon and challenging conventions. Join us to consider the impact of these strategies and to think about the future.

Artist Panel and In-Gallery Conversations

Morning Session:

Panel Discussion: Artists and Museums as Worldmakers

Engage with contemporary artists and critical thinkers:

Terence Hammonds

Artist

Terence Hammonds is a printmaker who lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio. His practice is informed and inspired by the struggles and determination of African Americans seeking equality during the Civil Rights movement. Hammonds fuses found imagery with soul, funk, rap, and punk influences, using decorative motifs and patterns to memorialize and reframe histories of racial identity in America. He received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His artwork Black Abolitionist Wallpaper, commissioned by The Newark Museum of Art in 2023, is currently on view.

Photo by Wally German.

Erica Lord

Artist

Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Erica Lord is an interdisciplinary artist exploring concepts and issues within a contemporary Indigenous experience, including how culture and identity are affected by a rapidly changing world. Lord’s artwork is informed by her experience growing up between Alaska and Upper Michigan and her identity, drawn from Athabaskan, Iñupiat, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, and English descent. An enrolled member of Nenana Native Village, she uses a variety of mediums to construct new representations of race to address multiple or mixed identity. Her artwork Multiple Myeloma Burden Strap, DNA/RNA Microarray Analysis, Variation II, 2023-24, was acquired by The Newark Museum of Art in 2024.

Bony Ramirez

Artist

Bony Ramirez is a Dominican-born artist who lives and works in New Jersey. Proudly self-taught, he paints surreal images of contemporary Caribbean life, reimagining colonial histories. Ramirez engages with Western European painting traditions as a way to think about the colonial influence still present in the Caribbean. He exhibits internationally and his artwork is in several institutions across the U.S. His solo exhibition Bony Ramirez: Cattleya is on view at The Newark Museum of Art April 18, 2024-March 9, 2025.

Photo by XEVOLVEZ.

Shahzia Sikander

Artist

Shahzia Sikander is an internationally renowned artist who is celebrated for subverting Central and South-Asian manuscript painting traditions, and for launching the form known today as neo-miniature. Born in Lahore, Pakistan and based in New York, Sikander’s practice, which also includes paintings, media work, and most recently, sculpture, has been pivotal in showcasing the art of the South Asian diaspora as a contemporary American tradition. Her first public sculpture, NOW, 2023 was acquired by The Newark Museum of Art in 2024.

Photo by Matin Maulawizada.

Seph Rodney

Discussant

Seph Rodney, PhD is a former senior critic and opinions editor for Hyperallergic and a regular contributor to The New York Times. He has written on art for CNN, NBC, Art in America, American Craft Magazine, and several other publications. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism prize and in 2022 won the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. He is a co-curator of Get in the Game, the largest exhibition that SF MoMA has undertaken, opening October 19, 2024.

Photo by Francesca Magnani.

Afternoon Session:

In-gallery Conversations: Balancing Past and Future Worlds

Join discussions about the collection with artists and curators throughout the Museum

Admission is free, but registration is required.

Get Free Tickets

Schedule

9:30am | Coffee and sign up for afternoon sessions

10am—Noon | Morning session, Englehard Court

Welcome and introductions
Panel: Artists and Museums as Worldmakers
Terence Hammonds, Erica Lord, Bony Ramirez, Shahzia Sikander
Discussant — Seph Rodney

Noon—1pm | Lunch (box lunch by advance purchase)

1—1:45pm | Book signing – Bony Ramirez: Cattleya (NMOA, 2024), catalog for exhibition on view in Global Contemporary galleries

Bony Ramirez
Jasmin Hernandez
Anne-Laure Lemaitre
Elena Muñoz-Rodriguez

2—3:25pm | Afternoon session, throughout the Museum

Breakout discussions – artists, curators, and public in conversation
Participants sign up in the morning for up to two 40-minute sessions set in Seeing America, Arts of Global Africa, Arts of Global Asia, Global Contemporary, and The Ballantine House

3:30 – 5pm | Activation and celebration of Shahzia Sikander, NOW, 2023

Museum’s main entrance and Harriet Tubman Square

Shahzia Sikander, NOW, 2023, © Shahzia Sikander, Photo by Sebastiano Pellion di Persano, Courtesy UAP Urban Art Projects and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and by Advancing Latinx Art in Museums, an initiative to nurture and prioritize US Latinx art supported by the Ford Foundation, the Getty Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art.