For the smart and free-thinking, Black Market Reads is a podcast featuring conversations with today's most exciting Black literary voices. We are a podcast for any one who loves to read, write, and engage. Black Market Reads is a project of The Givens Foundation for African American Literature.
“Having something in a rural space shifts the context of what permanence and importance American history is—for any and all, in every and all spaces.”
Esther Callahan
Michael Richards: Are You Down? is a compelling monograph that examines the life and work of Jamaican American artist Michael Richards through essays, images, and personal reflections. Edited by Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin, and featuring writers such as Edwidge Danticat, the book explores Richards’ engagement with race, history, flight, and identity while preserving the depth and urgency of his artistic legacy.
Recorded live at Franconia Sculpture Park, this episode of Black Market Reads brings listeners into a powerful, place-based conversation about the life, work, and legacy of artist Michael Richards. Host Lissa Jones is joined by curator Esther Callahan and book editors Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin to explore Are You Down?, Richards’ monumental sculpture created during his 2000 residency at Franconia.
Recorded live at Franconia Sculpture Park, this episode of Black Market Reads brings listeners into a powerful, place-based conversation about the life, work, and legacy of artist Michael Richards. Host Lissa Jones is joined by curator Esther Callahan and book editors Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin to explore Are You Down?, Richards’ monumental sculpture created during his 2000 residency at Franconia. Grounded in the physical presence of the work and shaped by reflections from Richards’ own artist statement—read by his cousin and steward Dawn Dale—the conversation weaves together art, history, race, and responsibility, asking what it means to engage with and carry forward the voice of an artist whose story continues through his work.
WATCH
Esther Callahan (Curator), and Alex Legeros (Executive Director, Franconia Sculpture Park) explore Are You Down? A sculpture by Michael Richards located at Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, MN.
The Michael Richards exhibition on Governors Island, curated by Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin, proves what an astonishing loss it was when the artist was killed on 9/11.
Esther Callahan is an independent curator, arts organizer and feminist scholar. Over the past 20+ years in the Twin Cities, she has created and co-created various platforms for cultural production rooted in interrogating the impact of racial and gender equity. She is the former Co-Director of the Emerging Curators Institute, a MN based nonprofit designed to build the individual practices of emerging curators from diverse backgrounds. Esther co-curated the Mapping Black Identities with Sounds of Blackness at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) featured on Episode 49 of Black Market Reads.
Alex Fialho is an art historian, curator, and PhD candidate in Yale University’s Combined PhD program in the History of Art and African American Studies. As an art historian and curator, Fialho focuses on modern and contemporary art, Black queer and feminist thought, and AIDS cultural studies.
Melissa Levin is a values driven art administrator and artist centered curator. In 2022 Levin joined the Jerome Foundation team and is currently serving as the inaugural New York City based program Officer supporting early career artists and arts organizations in Minnesota and New York City.
ENJOY!
Black Market Reads is a project of the Givens Foundation for African American Literature produced in partnership with iDream.tv. Our production team for this episode includes co-producers Lissa Jones and Edie French, technical director Paul Auguston, camera/YouTube editor Angelo Gbeve, the voice Yo Derek, and our artist of inspiration Ta-coumba T. Aiken.
