Amanda Williams


2022 MacArthur Fellow

Amanda Williams is an artist who uses ideas around color and architecture to explore the intersection of race and the built environment. Her works visualize the ways urban planning, zoning, development, and disinvestment impact the lives of everyday residents, particularly in African American communities.

She received a BArch (1997) from Cornell University. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at such national and international venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; and the Venice Architecture Biennale.

In October of 2022, Williams was named a MacArthur Fellow, a fellowship reserved for talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality, dedication in their creative pursuits, and a marked capacity for self-direction.

Photo credit: MacArthur Foundation

Germane Barnes


Wege Invitational Fellow 2022-2024
2022 Rome Prize Fellow
2021 Harvard Wheelwright Prize

Barnes’ research and design practice investigate the connection between architecture and identity. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences black domesticity. His design and research contributions have been published and exhibited in several international institutions. Most notably, The Museum of Modern Art, The Graham Foundation, The New York Times, Architect Magazine, DesignMIAMI/ Art Basel, The Swiss Institute, Metropolis Magazine, Curbed, and The National Museum of African American History where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise.

Photo Credit: Germane Barnes

Dr. Jafari Allen

Jafari Sinclaire Allen is currently the Director of Africana Studies and Inaugural Co-Director of the University of Miami Center for Global Black Studies. His second monograph, There’s a disco ball between us: A theory of Black gay life will be released by Duke University Press on March 1st.

Dr. Allen’s scholarship and teaching have opened up new lines of inquiry and offered reinvigorated methods of Black feminist narrative theorizing in anthropology, Black studies, and queer studies. Dr. Allen’s work has been funded and recognized by The National Science Foundation, Yale Center of Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and most recently by the Andrew A. Mellon Foundation for his ‘Miami initiative on Global Black Studies.’

Professor Allen is currently at work on two monographs: Marooned in Miami: Ecologies of Black Life on an Edge; and Structural Adjustments: Global Black Survival in the 1980s.



Dejha Carrington

Dejha is a creative worker and arts administrator. She consults on strategic planning, programming, and storytelling for nonprofits and social impact initiatives, and is dedicated to exploring models that are rooted in community and collaboration to support artists. Dejha is also a recognized speaker, frequently presenting on topics around access, entrepreneurship, and belonging with groups such as U.S. Presidential Scholars Foundation, Netflix, Americans For The Arts, and the University of Miami. 

In 2017, Dejha co-founded Commissioner, an art membership program that helps people collect the work of contemporary artists in their cities. Inspired by African, Caribbean, and women-led savings strategies, Commissioner uses group economics to support visual artist commissions and has thus far placed 600+ seminal works with mostly beginner and first-time collectors. From 2015 to 2022, Dejha served as Vice President of Strategic Communications for YoungArts, the national foundation for the advancement of artists.

Reverend Houston Cypress

Artist, activist, and ordained minister, Reverend Houston Cypress serves as the head of Love the Everglades Movement, an organization devoted to the development of platforms and initiatives for environmental protection and cultural preservation. Cypress also uses his platform to speak out as an advocate for two-spirited and non-binary gender peoples’, cultural preservation, business development, and sovereignty. Cypress acts as a cultural ambassador, fostering meaningful exchanges between his society of native clans and the Miami community.

Photo Credit: Houston Cypress

Nasir Dean aka Note Marcato

Whether you are introduced to Note Marcato in-person or through his music, there are two characteristics that will remain impressed upon you: the wattage and amorphousness of his star power. The 20-year-old producer and songwriter take zero forms. There isn’t a box that fits him, nor a space he can’t imbue. The only border associated with the New York University Clive Davis Institute pupil is his professional moniker. Note Marcato is an Italian representation of the 3-4 music note, which is intended to be played the loudest. Albeit, Marcato’s sound doesn’t prioritize volume as much as it does an exponentially higher standard. The evidence lives on his EPIC Records debut EP, Beach Bum Limbo, a composition not for the times, but of and for many eras. Some of which haven’t arrived yet.  - Bonsu Thompson

Photo Credit: Nasir Dean



Blake-Anthony Johnson

Dubbed a “business heavyweight” by Crain’s Chicago Business, arts executive Blake-Anthony Johnson has, throughout his career, extended the artistic, commercial, and technological boundaries of what an orchestra can be in the 21st century through creative leadership, commitment to innovation, and progressive vision. The first African American executive to guide a nationally renowned orchestra, he is President and Chief Executive Officer of the award-winning Chicago Sinfonietta.

He is an active member of numerous organizational boards and committees, including the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (in various roles) the Cultural Arts Council for the City of Chicago, The Sir Georg Solti Foundation U.S., and the League of American Orchestras’ EDI Orchestra Management Committee, Johnson is an accomplished musician and a former professional cellist and protégé of Michael Tilson Thomas at New World Symphony. The recipient of the 2022 Chicago Community Trust Daniel Burnham Fellowship, his former posts include two terms on the National Endowment for the Arts Music Panel.

Photo Credit: Blake-Anthony Johnson

Nichole Levy, Esq.


Photo Credit: Nichole Levy

Jenn Louie

Jenn Louie is an innovator, entrepreneur, and current student at Harvard Divinity School. She is committed to the decolonization of technologies and our moral futures and is researching how to address systemic oppression and injustice in tech governance and design through moral innovation.

She is the former COO of Year Zero Studios. Jenn is an industry expert in Integrity and Trust & Safety Operations and Tech Policy. She led teams at Facebook, Google, and Meetup. Jenn has spoken on tech governance and cyber intelligence at law schools, SXSW, IDEO, Techweek NYC, and the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium.

Jenn is currently enrolled as a student at Harvard Divinity School and serves on the board of Equal Access International, a non-profit dedicated to addressing youth marginalization and countering violent extremism.

Photo Credit: Jenn Louie



Kelly Marshall

Kelly Marshall is a New York-based photographer specializing in interiors, travel, food & portraiture. Her commercial and fine artwork are interwoven as she explores inherent belief systems, and how they construct our lives, homes, and in essence our everyday reality. Marshall's work has been exhibited at The Museum of The African Diaspora (MOAD), Southern Exposure, PhotoVille, and RUSH Arts. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal & Architectural Digest. Clients include CB2, The Four Seasons, Pottery Barn, and T Brand Studio. She is a 2018 Lit List Awardee and is a proud member of Diversify Photo, Black Women Photographers, Women Photograph, and a board member of Color Positive, a directory of Black photo talent and arts mentorship programs for New York City schools. Currently, she is directing her first film, Birthing of a Nation- an afro futuristic account of the reproductive justice movement and the healing arts of Black Women in America since 1619.

Photo Credit: Kelly Marshall

Larry Ossei-Mensah

Larry Ossei-Mensah uses art as a forum to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. He has organized exhibitions globally at such venues as the MCA Denver, MaSS MOCA, and the 7th Athen Biennale with OSMK Social Club. The projects have featured artists such as Firelei Baez, Ebony G. Patterson, Arthur Jafa, Judy Chicago, and Steve McQueen. The former Susanne Feld Hilberry senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Ossei-Mensah recently curated Boafo’s debut museum solo exhibition, Soul of Black Folks, at MoAD in San Francisco and CAMH in Houston. He also has co-curated with Rehema Barber Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st, which is currently on view at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. Ossei-Mensah is also the co-founder of ARTNOIR. ARTNOIR is a nonprofit whose mission is to drive racial equity in the art world by centering creatives, curators, collectors, and communities of color. www.artnoir.co. You can follow Ossei-Mensah at @younggloabl (Twitter) / @larryosseimensah (Instagram).

Photo Credit: Aaron Ramsey

Monica Rhodes


2022 Harvard Loeb Fellow


2022 Rome Prize Fellow

Monica Rhodes has worked at the intersection of history, architecture, and public engagement for fifteen years. Her impact on the industry ranges from local to international efforts to expand the field of preservation and public lands to new audiences.

Prior to joining the Loeb Fellowship, she led efforts at two of the largest national organizations focused on historic preservation and national parks- the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Park Foundation. During her tenure at the National Trust, Rhodes developed the first national program designed to diversify preservation trades. While at the National Park Foundation, Rhodes led efforts to reinstitute programs to preserve national parks that tell stories related to African American, LatinX, and Women’s history. 

Over the course of her career, Rhodes has helped raise and manage over $150 million and has directed preservation activities in 46 states. Rhodes's work has been featured in national outlets such as PBS NewsHour, Huffington Post, and Washington Post, and in a feature spread on women in the preservation movement for Essence magazine. 

Rhodes earned her undergraduate degree in history from the University of Tulsa, a master’s degree in African American studies at Temple Univ., and a master’s degree in historic preservation from the Univ. of Pennsylvania.



Christina Seely


2023 Guggenheim Fellow

Christina Seely is a visual artist and educator whose photographic practice stretches into the fields of science, design, installation, and sound. Often bearing first-hand witness alongside scientists in the field as the climate crisis has evolved, the arc of her research-based practice over more than a decade maps our increasingly tenuous relationship to the natural world.

Seely has a broad national and international exhibition record and is featured in many public and private collections. She was the recipient of a 2014 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, her first monograph Lux, was co-published in 2015 by Radius Books and the Museum of Contemporary Photography and she was a 2017 recipient of the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship. Her exhibition Next of Kin: Seeing Extinction Through An Artist’s Lens opened at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in 2017 which led to related research to a 2020 Environmental Humanities Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Her solo exhibition Dissonance and Disturbance opened at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska in 2021.

She is an Associate Professor in the Studio Art Department at Dartmouth College in Hanover NH and is currently working towards a self-designed Master’s in Theological Studies (’23) at Harvard Divinity School considering contemporary art as a space of spiritual holding in conversation with science as a way to build more effective climate crisis communication.



Mikhaile Solomon

Mikhaile Solomon is a designer and arts advocate with backgrounds in a myriad of arts disciplines including theatre, dance, and architecture. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Florida in Theatre Arts and her Master of Architecture from Florida International University.

Mikhaile enjoys working on projects that give her the opportunity to share her love of art, design, and architecture with the communities. She is the Founding Director of Prizm Art Fair which exhibits artists from Africa and the African Diaspora, who reflect global trends in contemporary art, through a blockbuster exhibit held during Art Basel/Miami. She hopes to use her varied skills in arts and design to set precedents for the future of Miami’s arts and culture scene.

Photo Credit: Miami Girls Foundation



Marie Vickles

Marie Vickles is the Director of Education at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and has served various roles within the Education department since October 2013. Marie also maintains an active practice as an independent curator with work on over 30 exhibitions and is the Curator-in-Residence at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex.

She has administered and organized arts educational programs, workshops, and exhibitions across the United States and the Caribbean for over 15 years. Marie completed her studies at F.I.T. in New York City and Florida State University which includes degrees in both Visual Arts and Public Administration. Marie currently serves the City of Miami as a board member of the Arts and Entertainment Council.

In her work as an arts educator, she is concerned with the development of new ways to bridge the connections between creativity and community engagement- with the goal of supporting equity, sustainability, and access for all, through the arts.



Rev. Erica Williams

Erica N. Williams is an international human rights activist, speaker, and author. She is the Founder of the Set It Off Movement a safe, sacred and socially just organism created to promote the well-being of poor black women and girls in the United States. It is aimed at ending the dehumanization, destruction, and death-dealing of poor Black women in America. The movement is inspired by the 1996 film Set It Off, which follows four Black women friends in Los Angeles, California, who plan to execute a bank robbery—each doing so for different reasons—to achieve better for themselves and their families.

She is a former national social justice organizer for Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Williams is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University, Howard University School of Divinity, and Harvard Divinity School. She is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).