“A Conscious Synchretizer”: A Conversation About Color, Form and Life in the Work of Ficre Ghebreyesus

Lowery Stokes Sims is a specialist in modern and contemporary art, craft and design and is known for her particular interest in a diverse and inclusive global art world and her support of artists whose identities and work reflect those values. Sims served on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1972-99), as executive director and president The Studio Museum in Harlem (2000-2007) and retired as Curator Emerita from the Museum of Art and Design (2007-2015). Over the last few years, Sims has been an independent curator and consultant for the Caribbean Cultural Center, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Craft Contemporary, Grounds for Sculpture, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Sims was Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2018-2020) and the 2021-22 Kress-Beinecke Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.  In 2022 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council. She organized the 2019 exhibition, Ficre Ghebreyesus: City with a River Running Through with Emily Kuhlmann, Director of Exhibitions & Curatorial Affairs, at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue.

Pamela Franks (left) is the Class of 1956 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, she has devoted her career to unlocking the potential of college and university art museums—working with students, collaborating with artists, fostering inclusive academic and public engagement, and training future generations of museum professionals. Franks’ arrival at Williams in 2018 launched a period of collaborative planning for WCMA’s first purpose-built building designed by Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu architects and scheduled to open in 2027.

Serubiri Moses (right) is a Ugandan curator and author based in New York City. His writing is primarily concerned with theories of art, and exhibition histories. His exhibitions are rooted in methods of collective teaching, and listening as an epistemic practice. He serves as part-time faculty in Art History at Hunter College, CUNY, and visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. He previously held teaching positions at New York University and the New Centre for Research and Practice, Germany/United States; Dark Study, United States; Digital Earth Fellowship, Netherlands; and delivered lectures at Williams College, Massachusetts; Yale University, Connecticut; University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The New School and basis voor aktuelle kunst, Netherlands; College of the Atlantic, Maine; and University of the Arts Helsinki. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions at museums including MoMA PS1, Long Island City (2021); the Hessel Museum, Bard College, NY (2019); and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2018). He previously held a research fellowship at the University of Bayreuth, received his MA in Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and is an alumni of the Àsìkò International Art Programme. He is Contributing Editor at e-flux journal, and his forthcoming book Judith Namala: A Novella is published by CARA.

Smooth Nzewi (left) is an artist, art historian, and the Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He leads the Africa group in the Museum’s Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP), MoMA’s research and exchange initiative focused on art in a global context. His projects at MoMA include Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound (2022), Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour (2024), and Odili Donald Odita: Songs from Life (2025).  Before joining MoMA, Nzewi served as the Curator of African Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2017–19) and at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum (2013–17).

Dawit L. Petros (right) is a visual artist and educator whose work is informed by the intertwined and multiple narratives of African and European colonialism and modernity. He draws from his study of history to examine displaced or forgotten histories. Petros conducts extensive research and travels to inform production across materials and mediums, including photography, sculpture, screen prints, video, sound, performance, and sound. A sensitivity to political and historical engagement is fused with aesthetic language that pays keen attention to color and abstraction, reflecting Petros’ long-standing preoccupation with traditions of minimalist sculpture and conceptual artmaking.

Dawit L. Petros received an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University, a BFA in Photography from Concordia University, a BFA in History from the University of Saskatchewan and completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Recent exhibition venues include the Liverpool Biennial, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort; Wereld Museum, Rotterdam; Tate Modern, London; Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo; Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC; and the Bamako Biennale in Mali.

Petros has been recognized with numerous accolades, including the Scotiabank Photography Prize, a Terra Foundation for American Art Research Fellow, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an Art Matters Fellowship.

Dawit L. Petros is a co-founder with Heba Y. Amin of Black Athena Collective. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Studio Art at Dartmouth College. Petros is represented by Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK, and Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Canada.