Black By Design: How Blackness Shaped American Cities, traces the history and impact of Black aesthetic and cultural influence and contributions across disciplines to the color, flavor and architectural shape of America. Featuring Nina Cooke John, Kamau Ware, Tahirah Rasheed, and Anita Bateman.
Anita N. Bateman is an independent curator and art historian who specializes in modern and contemporary African art and the art of the African diaspora with additional interests in the history of photography, Black feminism, and the role of social media in activism and contemporary art. Bateman holds a Ph.D. in Art History & Visual Culture from Duke University. She has held curatorial positions at the RISD Museum, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Nasher Museum of Art.
Nina Cooke-John is a Jamaican-born, New York-based architect and interior designer. She imbues the spirit of transformation and innovation into every design project, from the structure of a home’s interior to the streetscape of a city block. For two decades Nina has been a sought-after educator, having taught architecture and design strategy at Syracuse University and Parsons the New School for Design, she currently teaches at Columbia.
Born in West Oakland, Ca, home of the Black Panther Party and daughter of two Black Panther Party members, Tahirah Rasheed is a scholar, organizer and artrepreneur. As an internationally traveled Disc Jockey, former lab assistant, and published biomedical researcher, Tahirah lends her many talents and experiences to each venture in service of community. Tahirah is the co-founder of “See Black Womxn,” a Bay Area collective of artists and activists raised on Black feminist theory. Tahirah is working toward a day in which her ventures are part of the sustainable support of black art in service of black freedom, black love, and black prosperity.
Kamau Ware is a multidimensional creative blending complementary yet disparate disciplines as an artist/historian. Ware retells and expands history with scholarship and visual storytelling to fuse creativity and learning into one experience. He is best known for his flagship storytelling project, Black Gotham Experience (BGX), which creates media at the intersection of scholarship and aesthetics that illustrates the impact of the African Diaspora missing from collective consciousness as well as the public square.