About the Event

Join us for The Living Archive: Art, Memory, and Civic Imagination, a day-long festival that centers women’s creative practices as vital tools for shaping cultural memory and envisioning more just futures.

Presented in partnership with Well-Read Black Girl (an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of Black women writers and cultivating literary spaces rooted in community, care, and intellectual exchange), this gathering brings together writers, artists, and cultural leaders who approach the archive not as a static record, but as a living practice shaped through storytelling, art-making, and civic participation. In alignment with NMWA’s commitment to elevating women’s voices across disciplines, the festival highlights how creative expression can serve as both personal testimony and collective action.

Across three panels, explore how Black women document their inner lives, preserve collective memory, and engage history as an act of authorship, stewardship, and cultural responsibility. Together, these conversations illuminate the power of women artists and cultural leaders to challenge dominant narratives, foster community, and inspire social change.

The event opens with keynote speaker Ericka Hart, activist, writer, and author of the forthcoming book Nasty Work: Resist Systems, Explore Desire, and Liberate Yourself (2026), in conversation with Glory Edim, founder of Well-Read Black Girl. Panelists include authors Sasha Bonét (The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters, 2025), Bsrat Mezghebe (I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For, 2026), and Juanita Tolliver (A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics, 2025); poets Elizabeth Acevedo and Alexa Patrick; and archivists and cultural leaders Elizabeth Ajunwa (director of NMWA’s Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center), Amarie Gipson (founder of The Reading Room, HTX), Tsedaye Makonnen (interdisciplinary artist and curator, Black Women as/and the Living Archive), and Asmaa Walton (founder, Black Art Library). The event features book signings, opportunities to explore the galleries, and a sound bath led by ritual artist Tara Aura.

This program is presented in collaboration with the museum’s Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center (LRC). With more than 25,000 books and print resources, as well as a diverse collection of rare and unique items, including artists’ books and zines, the LRC facilitates scholarship on historical and contemporary women artists.

Explore the Festival Schedule.

About Well-Read Black Girl

This program is presented in partnership with Well-Read Black Girl, a global literary community dedicated to Black women. Well-Read Black Girl aims to introduce a cohort of diverse writers to future generations and to address inequalities and improve communities through reading and reflecting on the works of Black women.