Empowered Educators: Sharif Bey In Conversation

Join educators, artists, field professionals, and museum staff as we deepen our knowledge and understanding of topics critical to our lives as informed citizens during the ongoing Empowered Educators program. All Empowered Educator sessions are participatory in nature and explore the intersection of visual art, literature, and personal writing through time spent in conversation with artists, guest speakers, and one another. This series is rooted in Race Talk and encourages participants in their journey to build a more equitable and just world.

During November’s session, participants are invited to engage in conversation with artist and educator Sharif Bey, explore the museum’s recent exhibitionSharif Bey: Excavations, and reflect upon Bey’s guiding questions in relation to your own life and the lives of your students.

• What makes one believe they can become an artist?
• How does what I do connect to who I am?
• How can I fulfill a social responsibility to my community?

The November 18 Empowered Educators session will take place in the Ford Mateer Classroom. Carnegie Museum of Art will provide dinner and waive the parking fee for each participant. Registration is capped at 50 people.

About Sharif Bey:

For artist and educator Sharif Bey (b. 1974), curiosity and critical inquiry are paramount. In his artistic process, Bey engages his past and present selves, a process he calls auto-archaeology. As an African American whose family history includes enslavement and displacement, Bey forges ancestral identities in his sculpture. He explores functional and ritual objects, arts of the African and Oceanic diasporas, and the materiality of clay, metal, wood, and glass. He rejoices in nature, power, and awesomeness, in its literal sense: that which inspires awe.

About Empowered Educators:

Empowered Educators is a forum where educators discuss issues of race, equality, and bias through visual art, literature, and personal writing and reflection. The primary objective of Empowered Educators is to build a community of teachers as learners who benefit from an exchange of ideas with guest experts and each other, and who will then be better prepared and resourced to serve Western Pennsylvania’s students. Carnegie Museum of Art is pleased to partner with the Western Pennsylvania Writing Center, the Center for Urban Education at Pitt, and the PittEd Justice Collective to make this program possible.

Registration