Graduate Lecture Series: Legacy Russell
January 21, 2020
MFA in Visual Studies and the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture are excited to welcome curator, writer and artist Legacy Russell for a lecture on her work and practice as part of the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies Spring 2020 Lecture Series.
Join curator, writer, artist Legacy Russell in a discussion on the construct, culture, and material of the “meme” as mapped to black visual culture from 1900 to present day. Using archival media Russell will explore the impact of blackness, black life, and black social death on contemporary conceptions of virality borne in the age of the Internet. Following the lecture Russell will screen her video essay BLACK MEME (2020).
Legacy Russell is a curator, writer, and artist.
Born and raised in New York City, she is the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Russell holds a dual-major B.A. with Honors from Macalester College in Art History & Studio Art and English & Creative Writing with a focus in Gender Studies, and an MRes with Distinction in Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London with a focus in Visual Culture. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual.
Curated exhibitions and projects include Projects 110 : Michael Armitage, organized with Thelma Golden and The Studio Museum in Harlem at MoMA (2019) Dozie Kanu : Function (2019) and Radical Reading Room (2019) at The Studio Museum in Harlem and MOOD : Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2018-19 at MoMA PS1; GLITCH @ NIGHT, a series of multimedia events exploring digital feminism and celebrating queer nightlife at ICA London (2017); and the critically acclaimed Wandering/WILDING: Blackness on the Internet in collaboration with IMT Gallery and ICA London (2016).
Russell’s written work, interviews, and essays have been published internationally. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art and a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellow. Her first book, Glitch Feminism, is forthcoming from Verso Books in Fall 2020.
Free and open to the public. Can’t be there in person? Watch on our livestream channel: