“I hope the exhibition and associated publication resound with the spirit of the contributing artists and continue to conjure new dreams and new visions.” —Grace Wales Bonner
Join poet and writer Yona Harvey for a reading and discussion of excerpts from the book Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm—Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, assembled by Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Like Wales Bonner’s current MoMA exhibition, this book is a deeply personal meditation on and about modern Black expression, and it reflects Wales Bonner’s connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion.
This reading group is intended for individuals invested in connections to Black cultural and aesthetic practices inspired by the styles, experiences, forms, and sounds of the African diaspora, and for those who have an interest in archival research as both a form of spirituality and an aesthetic practice. We hope to inspire participants to connect the texts and artworks to their own personal experiences.
This session will focus on Greg Tate’s essay Hoodoo Is What We Do.
Register for the in-person reading group.
Yona Harvey is the author of the poetry collections You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love and Hemming the Water. Her poems have been published in several journals and anthologies, including Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Best American Poetry, Letters to the Future: Black Women/Radical Writing, and A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry. She cowrote Marvel Comics’ World of Wakanda, a companion series to the bestselling Black Panther comic, and Black Panther & the Crew. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Japan Creative Artists Fellowship.
This session is part of an ongoing Reading Group series. Our intention is to create space for people to gather to consider a range of perspectives and think critically through a guided reading of key texts that can help illuminate new ways of looking at artwork on view in MoMA’s galleries. Our priority is to create a space that is comfortable enough for participants to take risks with their thinking and possibly find a sense of fellowship, community, and camaraderie with the facilitator and their fellow readers.
Accessibility
American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation is available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Please contact [email protected] to make a request for these accommodations.
The Adobe Foundation is proud to support equity, learning, and creativity at MoMA.
Access and Community Programs are supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Major funding is provided by Volkswagen of America, the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art Endowment for Educational Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.