UPCOMING EVENTS
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September 2026
17sep6:30 pm8:30 pmWe be the luminous blues...Opening Conversation
Event Details
Opening Conversation Adama Delphine Fawundu will discuss We be the luminious blues… with Professors of English and Comparative Literature Farah Jasmine Griffin and Shana L. Redmond.
Event Details
Opening Conversation
Adama Delphine Fawundu will discuss We be the luminious blues… with Professors of English and Comparative Literature Farah Jasmine Griffin and Shana L. Redmond.
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a first-generation visual artist born in Brooklyn, NY, with heritage from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. Ms. Fawundu is a co-author/editor of the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. This book features over 100 women photographers of African descent from around the globe. Fawundu was featured in the critically acclaimed Netflix documentary film In Our Mother’s Garden, directed by Shantrelle P. Lewis. Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Catchlight Fellowship, Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant, as well as the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, among other awards. She received her MFA from Columbia University.
She has presented public installations at Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Federal Hall in New York City. Solo show exhibitions and performances include Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Newark Museum of Art, Art@Bainbridge/Princeton University, The Penumbra Foundation, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, African American Museum in Philadelphia, and Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture, among others.
In 2026, Fawundu released her first monograph Praise House on Archive Books. Also, her artist book In Search of the Spirit House was published by Express Newark and Project for Empty Space. Biennials include the 36th São Paulo Biennal (Brazil), the 1st Malta Biennal, and The 12th Edition of the Bamako Encounters Photography Biennial (Mali).
Her national and international exhibitions include Brooklyn Museum of Art, Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), Kunstverein Braunschweig, Maryland Institute of Art, Moody Center for the Arts, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Chale Wote Art Festival (Ghana), Norton Museum of Art, and the California African American Museum, among others. She has participated in artist residencies at the Center for Book Arts, the African Artist Foundation (Nigeria), Sacatar Institute (Brazil), the Penumbra Foundation, Indigo Arts Foundation, BRIC Workspace Residency, and Project for Empty Space.
Her printmaking collaborations include the Brandywine Workshop and Archives and the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University.
Her works can be found in the collections at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Newark Museum of Art, Princeton University Museum, Bryn Mawr College, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Norton Museum of Art, the David C. Driskell Center (University of Maryland), and the Petrucci Family Foundation, as well as private collections.
September 17, 2026 6:30pm
Lenfest Center for the Arts, 615 West 129th Street New York, NY 10027
With questions, contact Gavin Browning at gdb2106@columbia.edu.
EXHIBITION ON VIEW: SEPTEMBER 8, 2026 – MARCH 14, 2027
Time
Location
Lenfest Center for the Arts
615 West 129th Street New York, NY 10027
212-853-1619 | lenfest-center@columbia.edu
25sep10:00 am6:00 pmSongs in the Key of Life at 50: Symposium
Event Details
Columbia Center for the Study of Social Difference Presents Songs in the Key of Life at 50
Event Details
Columbia Center for the Study of Social Difference
Presents
Songs in the Key of Life at 50
A Symposium
Friday – September 25th
10 am – 6 pm
@ The People’s Forum
320 West 37th Street, New York, New York, 10018
A daylong symposium bringing together scholars, critics, musicians, and composers to reflect on the album’s insights into life in the wake of civil rights and decolonial movements across the African world, and on the legacies of Wonder’s hopeful vision of a future grounded in love and shared humanity.
To mark the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, CSSD is organizing a full-day symposium and accompanying concert.
The symposium and accompanying concert will reflect on the groundbreaking album’s insights into life in the wake of civil rights and decolonial movements across the African world, and on the legacies of Wonder’s hopeful vision of a future grounded in love and shared humanity. They will kick off a yearlong series of public events and study sessions that respond to the U.S. semiquincentennial and offer a critical counternarrative to officially sanctioned accounts of the country’s past by focusing on works with alternative anniversaries which illuminate the conditions and experiences of minoritized communities.
Held in partnership with The People’s Forum and the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, the symposium features four panels, each focusing on one side of Wonder’s four-sided album. Panels will bring together scholars and musicians for conversations that incorporate close listening and improvisational demonstrations. Themes broached in discussions will range from urban Black and brown impoverishment and jazz as a form of Black resistance to Black familial love and Global South solidarities. Panelists include Marcus J. Moore, LaFrae Sci, Samora Pinderhughes, Naomi Extra, Naima Cochrane, and Shana L. Redmond. The symposium will end with a jam session building off of the album’s bonus tracks, led by Dr. Guthrie Ramsey’s Musiqology, and a reception.
Following the symposium, CSSD is proud to co-present, along with Pique-nique, Boom Collective and The Radio in the Orchard (TRiO), a concert featuring musician Elliott Skinner. Organized as part of Pique-nique’s “Take Two” series, the concert will include a listening session of Wonder’s album followed by a reinterpretation by Skinner. Blending soul, blues, folk, and rock, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Skinner creates music that combines atmospheric vocals and rich instrumentation with an emphasis on personal storytelling. His work draws from the Black Radical Music Tradition, a lineage of Black artists who have used music to explore identity, confront social realities, and imagine new possibilities for freedom. To purchase tickets for the concert, follow the link here. This eventbrite only secures your ticket for the symposium.
Time
Location
The People's Forum
320 West 37th Street
October 2026
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November 2026
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December 2026
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