Thursday, August 21, 2025 | 6:00-7:30 PM
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St., SF, CA 94102
Part of San Francisco Arts Commission’s “Shaping Legacy” program
FREE | Register via Humanitix
“Black Eyes On Black Art,” is an open-ended conversation, investigating the importance of Black people witnessing and creating Black art during times of uncertainty and conflict.
In 2024, Tenderloin Museum was selected as a Community Collaborator in the Shaping Legacy project, a multi-year equity-focused initiative by SFAC to critically examine the monuments and memorials in San Francisco’s Civic Art collection. TLM’s role included assembling and facilitating an “Artist Circle”--a cohort of artists from our community with deep experience and diverse perspectives–to participate in the Shaping Legacy discourse, produce public programs, and ultimately inform future requests for proposals from the Arts Commission.
Please join us and witness this conversation amongst two members of TLM’s Shaping Legacy Artist Circle–artist Ramekon O’Arwisters and community advocate and facilitator Mattie Loyce–in dialogue with writer and GLIDE Memorial Church’s Minister of Celebration Marvin K. White, visual artist Cheryl Derricotte, and curator and artist historian Key Jo Lee of MoAD,
SPEAKERS:
Marvin K. White is the Minister of Celebration at Glide Memorial Church. Marvin is a writer, artist, preacher and public theologian, articulating a vision for social, prophetic and creative justice. He earned a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, CA, and is a well sought-out preacher, teacher and facilitator. Marvin has contributed to local and national publications, and is the author of four collections of poetry: Our Name Be Witness; Status and the two Lambda Literary Award-nominated collections, last rights and nothin’ ugly fly. His poetry has been adapted for stage and screen, and he has performed original works at many theaters. Marvin also performed nationally and internationally as a former member of the acclaimed theater troupe, PomoAfroHomos. He was a Teaching Artist for WritersCorps, and has continued to lead creative arts and writing workshops for a range of audiences. He holds a fellowship in the national African-American poetry organization, Cave Canem, and founded and sat on the board of two BIPOC and LGBTQ writer’s organizations: Fire & Ink and B/GLAM. In 2019, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts named him as one of the “YBCA 100.”
Key Jo Lee (she/her) is chief of curatorial affairs and public programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. In this role, Lee oversees the strategic direction for the museum’s exhibitions and programs; leads globally on identifying and promoting emerging artists from the African diaspora; and works to expand MoAD’s reach and influence locally, nationally, and internationally. She is responsible for the overall management and execution of the museum’s curatorial vision, including its exhibitions, publications, and public and educational programs, and plays an important role in the organization’s outreach, communications, and digital strategy.
Lee has a master’s degree from and is PhD candidate in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University. Her first book, Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking, was published by Yale University Press and The Cleveland Museum of Art in January 2023.
Cheryl Derricotte is a San Francisco-based visual artist working in glass, paper, and textiles. Her work explores themes of identity, memory, and place, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, KQED, and more. She is the 2025 George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellow in Objects and Installation Art and a current public artist with major projects in the Midwest and West. Cheryl created Freedom’s Threshold—the first glass monument to Harriet Tubman—unveiled in 2023. She has held prestigious residencies at the Museum of Glass, Corning Museum of Glass, Kala Art Institute, and more, and her work is in the permanent collections of the deYoung, Museum of Glass, and Oakland Museum of California. Cheryl holds an MFA from CIIS, a Master’s in Planning from Cornell, and a BA from Barnard. A licensed city planner, she merges art and civic engagement across disciplines.
San Francisco Arts Commission’s “Shaping Legacy” is a multi-year commitment to critically examine the monuments and memorials in San Francisco’s Civic Art collection. This project is an opportunity for our agency to holistically assess the Civic Art Collection, build awareness around the collection and processes, rectify current power imbalances, and engage community in a sustained, relevant way.
Check out TLM’s Artist Circle’s previous public program (April 17, 2025) for Shaping Legacy, Monumentalizing Community: film screening, discussion, & co-creation, organized by Skywatchers and Preethi Ramaprasad.