Join us for an evening with Dr. Cherise Smith, Founding Executive Director and Dr. Phillip Townsend, Curator of the Art Galleries for Black Studies. (AGBS)

In 2014, the Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS)—comprised of Christian-Green Gallery and Idea Lab--was founded as a distinct unit of Black Studies by Founding Executive Director Dr. Cherise Smith. It became the sole on-campus entity dedicated to showcasing the art of Africa and the African Diaspora at The University of Texas at Austin.

Since then, in addition to growing its extensive collection, AGBS has cultivated and presented a spectacularly tenacious and robust body of work including a richly diverse and incisive array of cutting-edge exhibitions that span the local, national and international spectrum, seminars, workshops, residencies, panel discussions, artist talks, publications, performances, the superlative multi-year symposium series "Why Black Museums?", and off-campus outreach.

Through its ten years of programming, AGBS has profoundly nourished the minds and imaginations of multitudes across an expanding network of intersections and become a leading bellwether - in concert with the George Washington Carver Museum, in the elevation of Black art and scholarship in the Austin community and beyond. And is has done it all with a small but intrepid and indefategable team.

Grab your spot for an evening of learning more about this trailblazing and invaluable institution and it's driving force!

Dr. Cherise Smith is Chair of the African and African Diaspora Studies at Black Studies Collective and Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the award-winning author of Michael Ray Charles: Studies in Blackness (University of Texas Press, 2020) which places the artist’s work in the context of the 1990s, the rise in collecting of Black “memorabilia,” and Pop art as well as Enacting Others: the Politics of Identity in Eleanor Antin, Anna Deavere Smith, Nikki S. Lee, and Adrian Piper (Duke University Press, 2011). Curator, culture-worker, and art historian, Dr. Smith is the Founding Executive Director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies, the only museum dedicated to Black art on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Her most recent exhibition, Old Wounds, Dark Dreams, featured works by artists Carrie Mae Weems, Cauleen Smith, Rodney McMillian, and Charles Gaines who are also the subjects of her current book project.

Dr. Phillip Townsend is the Curator of Art at Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS) at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Art History from UT Austin (2024, 2016) and his B.A. in Art History from The University of South Florida (2014).
As a founding member of the Austin-based curatorial collective, Neon Queen Collective, Phillip co-curated notable exhibitions such as Notes on Sugar: The Work of María Magdalena Campos-Pons (2018) at the Christian Green Gallery and Like the Lonely Traveler: Video Works by María Magdalena Campos-Pons (2018) at the Visual Arts Center. He also co-curated Charles White: Celebrating the Gordon Gift (2019), presented by the Blanton Museum in collaboration with African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) and AGBS at The University of Texas at Austin.
In addition to public lectures, Phillip's scholarly contributions extend to peer-reviewed journals and magazines, as well as essays for exhibition catalogs, including Charles White: Celebrating the Gordon Gift (UT Press) and María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold (Getty Publications). At AGBS, he curated significant exhibitions such as Wura-Natasha Ogunji: earth, body, spirit, and Melvin Edwards: WIRE(D) + CHAIN(ED), featuring the work of Houston native and African American art and sculpture pioneer Melvin Edwards. Phillip's recent exhibitions at AGBS include Nicole Awai: In the thick of it, Rashaun Rucker: Patron Saints of a Black Boy, Michael A. Booker: Wave Patterns, and Alicia Henry: (un)knowing.

Go to https://www.galleriesatut.org/ to learn more.

Follow AGBS on Instagram.
@galleriesatut

Down load the AGBS Timeline.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yrjT06QdQysvUZlSF8nUdcckNiygDTA5/view?usp=sharing

"Why Black Museums?"
https://www.galleriesatut.org/why-black-museums

The Neon Queen Collective
https://www.neonqueencollective.com/

photo: Nicole Awai's artist talk for her exhibition "In the thick of it", currently up at AGBS with Phillip Townsend, chief curator, standing next to her on the left.