The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College presents "Conversations on the Nature of Contemporary Curatorial Practice," a 3-part lecture series in conjunction with Mavis Pusey, Restless on view through January 3, 2027.
"Higher Goals: Ethics of Curatorial Reasoning" with Akili Tommasino
11 am Private viewing in galleries
12 pm Presentation over lunch
This talk examines the moral dimensions of decision making and problem solving within curatorial practice through reassessment of a range of recent transhistorical exhibitions and projects featuring the work of contemporary artists including Barbara Chase-Riboud, Emory Douglas, Awol Erizku, Lauren Halsey, David Hammons, Oscar Murillo, and Adrian Piper.
Akili Tommasino is the Allison and Larry Berg Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At The Met, he organized Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now (2024), The Facade Commission: Nairy Baghramian, Scratching the Back (2023) and along with Dr. Andrea Achi, Afterlives: Contemporary Art in the Byzantine Crypt (2024; on view through January 2027). He was the 2023 Cynthia Hazen Polsky/ Metropolitan Museum of Art Visiting Curator at the American Academy in Rome. Previously, he held curatorial positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A former Fulbright Fellow at the Centre Pompidou, he is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, where he earned his MA and BA. In 2017, he cofounded the Prep for Prep/ Sotheby’s Summer Art Academy to foster new generations of cultural leaders and in 2020, along with his wife, Dr. Amanda Herrera Tommasino, he launched Pana Projects, an arts and education initiative in the Caribbean.
Image: David Hammons, Higher Goals, 1986. Courtesy of the Public Art Fund, New York. Photo: Pinkney Herbert/Jennifer Secor
Co-sponsored by the Kohler Lecture Fund for Art History, Pomona College
