The Scholars Speak II

The Phillips Collection presents *The Scholars Speak II*, a panel discussion created in partnership with Millennium Arts Salon. The special 15th-anniversary program continues the legacy of the original *Scholars Speak*, which was presented at the Phillips in 2008. Moderated by Adrienne L. Childs, the conversation explores African American art and art history, including the ways artists, scholars, and curators shape understanding of these histories today.

When: October 15, 2026, at 6:30 pm.

Showtimes: The panel begins at 6:30 pm. No end time or running time is listed.

Venue: The Phillips Collection.

Format: In-person panel discussion.

Moderator: Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian, curator, and senior consulting curator at The Phillips Collection. She is the author of *Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts*, a Yale University Press book about Black figures in European decorative arts. Her Phillips projects have included curating *Beauford Delaney: So Much Love and Beauty* and *Jubilee: Celebrating 25 Years of the Driskell Center*, as well as co-curating *Out of Many: Reframing an American Art Collection* and *Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest*. She also curated *Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition* at the Phillips in 2020 and received the 2022 Driskell Prize for achievement in African American art history.

Panelists: Camille Brown, an associate curator at The Phillips Collection, has curated *Essex Hemphill: Take care of your blessings* and co-curated *Where We Meet: Selections from the Howard University Gallery of Art and The Phillips Collection* and *Pour, Tear, Carve: Material Possibilities in the Collection*. She has also coordinated exhibitions including *Lou Stovall: The Museum Workshop* and the Washington, DC, presentation of *African Modernism in America, 1947–67*. Her previous museum work includes positions at the Norton Simon Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Tuliza Fleming is curator of American Art at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She helped build the museum’s foundational American art collection, co-curated *Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment*, and served as lead curator for its inaugural exhibition, *Visual Art and the American Experience*. Fleming has curated more than 20 exhibitions since 1996 and has written on African American art, the Harlem Renaissance, AfriCOBRA, the Apollo Theater, and the experiences of curators of color.

Melanee C. Harvey-Fryar is an associate professor of art history at Howard University, where she also coordinates the art history area of study. Her scholarship addresses architectural iconography in African American art, Black Arts Movement artists, religious art connected to Black liberation theology, and ecowomanist art practices. She has curated exhibitions on Gordon Parks and African American religious life, including *Wherever There is Light*, *Gordon Parks: Pastor E.F. Ledbetter and Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church*, and *Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life*. She is writing a book titled *Patterns of Permanence: African Methodist Episcopal Architecture and Visual Culture*.

Jordana Moore Saggese is a professor of modern and contemporary American art at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former editor-in-chief of the College Art Association’s *Art Journal*. Her research connects visual culture, popular culture, and traditional art history while examining exclusionary practices within cultural institutions. She is an internationally recognized scholar of Jean-Michel Basquiat and has written *Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art* and *The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses*. Her most recent book is *Heavyweight: Black Boxers and the Fight for Representation*, published in August 2024.

Tickets: Free.

Registration: A reservation is required. Registration is open.

Ages: No age restriction is listed.

Accessibility: No accessibility information is provided.