Photo by Frank Ishman

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 7 PM

Dawoud Bey, acclaimed photographer and educator is in conversation with Sophie Landres, Curator, and Exhibitions Manager of The Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz. Bey and Landres will discuss his much celebrated bodies of work beginning with the 2013 Birmingham Project up through his most recent 2025 exhibition at the Sean Kelly entitled Stony The Road. After the conversation, attendees are welcome to join the artist and curator for a reception in the Lobby Gallery with books for sale from Oblong Books.

SAT, OCT 11, 7 PM

$5–$15 Sliding-Scale, General Admission

60 minutes followed by reception

Black Box Theater, Studio Complex (indoors)

ABOUT DAWOUD BEY

His most recent project, Stony the Road, reframes the path taken by over 350,000 enslaved Africans forced to march to holding cells for auction in Richmond, Virginia. The accompanying film was made in collaboration with cinematographer Bron Moyi and dancer, choreographer, and dance historian, Dr. E. Gaynelle Sherrod, who created the soundtrack.

—Exhibition text for Dawoud Bey: Elegy

at New Orleans Museum of Art

Conjoined Trees and Field, 2019, Dawoud Bey (American, born 1953). Gelatin silver print. Image: 44 x 55 in., Paper: 48 x 59 in.

Rennie Collection, Vancouver, BC, Canada. © Dawoud Bey

Bey’s work has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, including Dawoud Bey: An American Project organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020-2022), and Elegy at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2023–2024) and New Orleans Museum of Art (2025–2026); and Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits at the Denver Art Museum (2024–2025). He has been the subject of several monographs, including Elegy (Aperture/VMFA, 2023), which chronicles Bey’s history projects and landscape-based work.

Bey is the recipient of numerous awards including five honorary doctorates, and in 2024, the artist was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bey lives and works in Chicago and New York. He is currently a Critic at Yale University, where he received his Masters in Fine Arts, and is Professor Emeritus at Columbia College, Chicago.