On May 21st Black Market Reads launched our first all virtual livestream event. In partnership with the Walker Art Center, The Givens Foundation for African American Literature, Platform Arts and iDream.tv, Lissa spoke with Dr. Seph Rodney about the changing role of museums.
Together, they discuss Rodney’s 2019 book The Personalization of the Museum Visit, in which he examines recent shifts in museum management toward a model of public engagement and visitor personalization. Rodney was recently awarded the 2020 Rabkin Art Journalism Award.
A lightly edited podcast version of the conversation will be available soon, but in a Black Market Reads first we’re making video of the interview available now. Watch the conversation below. And a big thanks to those who tuned in to the live event.
More About Seph Rodney
Seph Rodney, PhD was born in Jamaica, and came of age in the Bronx, New York. He has an English degree from Long Island University, Brooklyn; a studio art MFA from the University of California, Irvine; and a PhD in museum studies from Birkbeck College, University of London. While in London, he created, produced, and hosted a radio show called The Thread.
He became a staff writer at Hyperallergic in 2016 and is now a senior editor and writer there, writing on contemporary art and related issues. He has also written for The New York Times, CNN, NBC Universal, and American Craft Magazine and penned catalog essays for Joyce J. Scott, Teresita Fernandez, and Meleko Mokgosi, among others. He has appeared on the AM Joy show with Joy Reid and on the Jim Jefferies Show on Comedy Central. He can be heard on the podcast “The American Age”. His book, The Personalization of the Museum Visit, was published by Routledge in May of 2019. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize.
THANKS TO:
Walker Art Center
iDream (DOT)TV
Platform Arts