In conjunction with the exhibition “Museum as Hub: Steffani Jemison and Jamal Cyrus: Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet,” Jemison and Cyrus have invited guests to read and interpret their favorite selections from the periodicals on display. For this event, Steffani Jemison will be joined by Firelei Baez, Mildred Beltre, Aisha Cousins, and Zachary Fabri. These public readings will take place in the 5th floor Museum as Hub gallery space and are free and open to the public. Space is limited, please RSVP to museumashub@newmuseum.org to guarantee a space.

Steffani Jemison is an artist who explores the questions that arise when conceptual art practices are inflected by Black history and vernacular culture. She has participated in screenings and exhibitions at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas; Laura Lee Blanton Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Carol Jazzar Gallery, Miami; the UCLA New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Union Docs, Brooklyn; SPACES, Cleveland; and Unspeakable Projects, San Francisco. Her writing has been published in ART LIES (Artist as Performer, Winter 2010 and Negritude, Fall 2009) and she has organized projects for Light Industry at X-Initiative, New York; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York; and Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY. In 2010, she initiated Future Plan and Program, a publishing project that features book-length literary works by visual artists. In connection with this, she has delivered readings and performances at Project Row Houses, Houston; ThreeWalls, Chicago; and Southern Exposure, San Francisco. She has delivered invited lectures at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston; the Menil Collection, Houston; the University of Chicago; and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was a Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Fellow (2009–2011), a Project Row Houses Artist-in-Residence (2010–2011), and has participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2008). Jemison holds a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.