FORT LAUDERDALE, FL – In recognition of Juneteenth, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale will present “Looking Forward, Looking Back: Freedom, Afrofuturism and Reflections on Juneteenth,” a free virtual panel discussion on Saturday, June 19 at 3 p.m. This event launches Community Voices, NSU Art Museum’s new initiative supported by the Community Foundation of Broward, that focuses on exploring social and racial inequalities and challenging social structures, including representation in museums. Community Voices will provide a new forum for community discourse as it highlights topics of identity, migration and race through talks, multidisciplinary performances and workshops that are aimed at celebrating diversity and that serve as a catalyst for social change.
Speakers for the event are Ransford F. Edwards, Jr., Ph.D., Kandy G. Lopez-Moreno, M.F.A. and Rachel Panton, Ph.D., faculty members of Nova Southeastern University, who will look back at the historical context of emancipation, as well as the ongoing tension between the rhetoric of recovery and an imagined and unenslaveable Black future in art, literature, and pop culture.
Tickets are free and must be reserved in advance. For reservations, email moareservations@moafl.org or call (954) 262-0258. Tickets may also be reserved online at nsuartmuseum.org.
Speaker bios:
*Ransford F. Edwards, Jr., Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Politics. His research interests include disaster politics, particularly disaster capitalism. He explores social and economic justice through the transformative nature of natural disasters. Edwards’ regional areas of focus are the Caribbean and Latin America. His work appears in Class, Race, and Corporate Power and he has been a reviewer for the journal Disasters. His teaching interests include quantitative research methods, political economy, and political film and fiction.
*Kandy G. Lopez-Moreno, M.F.A., is an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. As a visual artist, Lopez-Moreno explores constructed identities, celebrating the strength, power, confidence and swag of individuals who live in urban and often economically disadvantaged environments. With a variety of mediums, her images develop a personal and socially compelling visual vocabulary that investigates race, the human defense mechanism, visibility and armor through fashion, and gentrification. Lopez-Moreno’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums.
*Rachel Panton, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Panton’s primary focus is women’s narratives of wellness and transformation. She was a guest editor for the University of California, Berkeley’s Race and Yoga Journal and is the founder of Women Writing Wellness. She is the editor of the forthcoming book, Black Girls Om Too: Black Women’s Bodies & Resistance to the Visual and Narrative Rhetoric of Yoga and is co-editor of Calling of the Crowns: Black American priestess narratives of awakening to the divine feminine, divination, healing, and spiritual modalities of service in African Diasporic Religions.
Support for Community Voices has been provided by the following Funds at the Community Foundation of Broward: Barbara and Michael G. Landry Fund for Broward, Peck Family Fund, Julia C. Baldwin Fund, and Frederick W. Jaqua Fund.
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale is located at One East Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, Fla. For additional information, visit nsuartmuseum.org or call (954) 525-5500. Follow the Museum on social media @nsuartmuseum
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale
Founded in 1958, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale is a premier destination for exhibitions and programs encompassing many facets of civilization’s visual history. Located midway between Miami and Palm Beach in downtown Fort Lauderdale’s arts and entertainment district, the Museum’s 83,000 square-foot building, which opened in 1986, was designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and contains over 25,000square feet of exhibition space, the 256-seat Horvitz auditorium, a museum store and café. In 2008, the Museum became part of Nova Southeastern University (NSU), one of the largest private research universities in the United States. NSU Art Museum is known for its significant collection of Latin American art, contemporary art with an emphasis on art by Black, Latinx and women artists, African art that spans the 19th to the 21st-century, as well as works by American artist William Glackens, and the European Cobra group of artists. Two scholarly research centers complement the collections: The Dr. Stanley and Pearl Goodman Latin American Art Study Center and the William J. Glackens Study Center.
Exhibitions and programs at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale are made possible in part by a challenge grant from the David and Francie Horvitz Family Foundation. Funding is also provided by the City of Fort Lauderdale, AutoNation, Community Foundation of Broward, the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council and Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau, the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale is accredited by the American Association of Museums.
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