In Conversation: Derek Fordjour and Katy Siegel

On the occasion of "Spotlight: Derek Fordjour" (on view November 11-December 19, 2026), the artist will be in conversation with Katy Siegel, Distinguished Professor and the Thaw Chair at Stony Brook University. Wednesday, November 11, from 6-8 PM; The conversation will begin at 6:30. RSVP here. The FLAG Art Foundation’s Spotlight exhibition series includes new or never-before-exhibited artworks accompanied by commissioned pieces of writing. It is the hope of this series to create focused and thoughtful dialogues between the visual arts and authors, critics, poets, peers, scholars, and beyond. In this iteration, the Spotlight features a new work by Derek Fordjour and a text by journalist and author Donovan X. Ramsey. About: Derek Fordjour was born in Memphis, Tennessee to Ghanaian parents. He is the recipient of the 2025 Gordon Parks Foundation Artist Fellowship, the 2023 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Spirit of the Dream Award, and the 2022 Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Alumni Achievement Award. He has previously served as the Alex Katz Chair in Painting at Cooper Union, and a Visiting Critic at Yale and Columbia Universities. He has received public commissions for High Line Art and MTA’s Arts & Design program in New York City, and MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. Fordjour’s work is held in notable public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, and The Royal Collection in London among others. His work has been reviewed in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times. A monograph of his work is forthcoming by Phaidon in 2027. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and an MFA in painting from Hunter College. In 2021 he founded Contemporary Arts Memphis, a youth-based arts organization in his hometown. Donovan X. Ramsey is an indispensable voice on issues of identity, culture, and power in America. His reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, GQ, WSJ. Magazine, Ebony, Essence, and other outlets. He has worked as a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, NewsOne, and theGrio, and as an editor at The Marshall Project and Complex. Ramsey is the author of When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era, a work of narrative nonfiction about how Black America survived the crack epidemic, published by One World, an imprint of Random House. He holds degrees from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Morehouse College. Katy Siegel is a Distinguished Professor and the Thaw Chair at Stony Brook University. Her curated exhibitions include Joan Mitchell; Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017; Mark Bradford’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art; and Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965. She has written and edited several books, including the Joan Mitchell catalog; Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed; and out this fall from Yale University Press, What Was America? Art, Culture, and Politics in 1976.