Robin D.G. Kelley in Conversation with Delphine Sims

Artist Consuelo Kanaga passionately photographed both renowned and lesser-known Black figures throughout her career. Her commitments to social justice and workers’ rights brought her into contact with many Black organizers and laborers between the 1930s and 1950s. These individuals, like Kanaga, led extraordinary lives with expansive careers. Historian Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley, in conversation with Assistant Curator of Photography Delphine Sims, will delve into the stories behind many of the people Kanaga photographed. Dr. Kelley will discuss the politics of race and labor in Kanaga’s artwork, exploring her complex relationship with the Black working class and Black social movements. Kanaga created thoughtful and beautiful portraits; Dr. Kelley will guide us through how these pictures reflect a collaboration between a talented photographer and her impactful, multifaceted sitters. Join us to discover the lives of Kanaga and figures such as Eluard Luchell McDaniel, Annie Mae Merriweather, and Angelo Herndon, among others.

About the Speakers

Robin D. G. Kelley is distinguished professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. His books include Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class; Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America; Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; and Black, Brown and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the African Diaspora, co-edited with Franklin Rosemont. Kelley is currently completing two books, Making a Killing: Cops, Capitalism, and the War on Black Life and The Education of Ms. Grace Halsell: An Intimate History of the American Century. His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Boston Review, for which he also serves as contributing editor.

Delphine Sims is an assistant curator in the Department of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She completed her PhD in the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley with a focus on Blackness and American landscape photography. Sims has held positions at several museums, including predoctoral fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts within the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She previously held curatorial roles within the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. In addition to exhibition catalogues, her writing can be found in Aperture, Matte Magazine, and The Believer.