The role of art and museums in representing past and present cultures, as well as shaping the future of diverse cultural landscapes, is the topic of the next installment of the Let’s Talk About Race Series of discussions presented by the Office of Inclusive Excellence.

UB Art Galleries Curator Liz Park will moderate a roundtable discussion with two leading thinkers and curators in the field of contemporary art — Candice Hopkins and Yesomi Umolu — who will share their perspectives on the limits of museums as sites of knowledge and explore the possibility of creating just and open spaces in which art can amplify voices and broaden views.

The event, “How Can Art Museums Model the Future of Diverse Cultural Landscapes?” will take place from 5:30-6:30 p.m. March 10 via Zoom. Register here. The discussion is also sponsored by the UB Art Galleries.

A resident of Albuquerque, Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, whose writing and curatorial practice explores the intersections of history, contemporary art and indigeneity. She has served as senior curator for the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma.

Umolu was recently named director of curatorial affairs and public practice at the Serpentine Galleries in London. She previously was director and curator of the Logan Center Exhibitions at the University of Chicago, where she also taught courses in visual art and spatial practices as a lecturer in the humanities division. As artistic director of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial, Umolu oversaw a critically acclaimed curatorial program featuring new commissions, off-site installations and a host of performances, talks, workshops and community engagements with more than 80 international contributors.

Park was associate curator of the 2018 Carnegie International at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh before joining the UB Art Galleries staff in 2019. She has curated exhibitions at a wide range of institutions including the Western Front, Vancouver; the Kitchen, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania; the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University; and Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, South Korea.