Who decides our history?
Who do we anoint to control the art and cultural historical narrative?
How do we challenge the ongoing and active erasure of cultures, traditions, and teachings within institutional frameworks?

Join us in a panel discussion including the African American Museum of Philadelphia (AAMP), We Are the Seeds, social practice artist Gigi McGraw, and others to dissect this and adjacent topics critical to the preservation of culture.

This panel will be a hybrid event - attendees are welcome to attend at DVAA, or attend via zoom (link emailed to those registered).

About the Panelists:

Tailinh Agoyo is co-founder and director of We Are the Seeds, a non-profit organization committed to amplifying Indigenous voices through the arts. Now in its sixth year, We Are the Seeds has produced over 145 public programs, increasing agency and direct engagement between Indigenous peoples and audiences. Agoyo is also the host of From Here, With a View, a podcast that honors the voices of Indigenous artists, performers, educators, and change-makers. She has worked in film and television for more than thirty years and helped to produce the beautiful children’s book I Will Carry You. Her own artwork is focused on capturing the vibrancy of Indigenous peoples today, including The Warrior Project, a collection of photos of Native youth and their continuing commitment to environmental stewardship. In addition to these many projects and roles, she is mom to four wonderful boys.

Gigi McGraw is a social practice artist, actress, and writer who coined the term PhilHERstorian to describe her invested interest in the cultural and historical preservation of Philadelphia.  She is the founder and curator of POMON- Philadelphia Online Museum of Neighborhoods (virtual grand-opening February 2023) and earned her Master’s Degree in theater from Villanova University. Gigi is fascinated with the life stories of individuals; and is inspired by projects such as the Federal Writers’ Project of the 1930’s, which recorded the narratives of the formerly enslaved. She is also an advocate for hyperlocal history projects.  Gigi documents life through recorded testimony, exhibits, print, and creative missions locally and abroad.

Morgan Lloyd
Morgan T. Lloyd is an Afro-Indigenous curator, community arts administrator, educator, and public historian from Lenapehoking (Philadelphia area) with a passion for uplifting the area's rich BIPOC Antebellum histories. Working alongside the programming team at AAMP, she oversees AAMP's docent core and provides interpretive tours.

Additionally, she serves as an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with curatorial initiatives to uplift local Black and local Indigenous narratives in the Early American galleries. Also, she is an educational partner with several Philadelphia area schools, including Agnes Irwin Upper School.

Zindzi Harley
Currently serving as Assistant Curator at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. An Alumna of the University of Arts where I completed my M.A. in Museum Studies. I also act as Project Curator of Past Present Projects, a local Philadelphia arts organization that exhibits contemporary art in historic sites. My research focuses on the histories of Black museums and how we can learn from these founding museums to leverage institutional structures that advocate for the preservation of cultural heritage of the African diaspora. Zindzi Harley was a curator for our exhibitionsDistant Memory featuring artists Colin Pezzano and Emily Carris-Duncan, and Black Quantum Futurism's Ancestors returning again / this time only to themselves at historic Hatfield House.

Moderated by David Acosta
David Acosta (Also known as Juan Armando David Acosta Posada) is a writer, poet, cultural worker and co-founder of Casa de Duende, along with his life partner Jerry Macdonald.

He has served on a wide range of committees and boards, including past work with the Philadelphia International Film Festival, The Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, The PA Council on the Arts, as well as a founding member of Our Living Legacy (1988), the nation's first festival devoted to art and AIDS. In 1993 he served on the East Market Street Sculpture Review Committee, which selected artist Raymond Sandoval’s Tanamend sculpture from among more than 3,000 artist proposals. He was a founding member of The Latin American Writers Collective, Desde Este Lado, as well as the magazine that bore its name. He was also a co-founder of the Philadelphia Working Fund for Artists with HIV/AIDS. In 1989 he curated the Pieces of Life Project at Taller Puertorriqueño which brought the National Names Project (Originators of the AIDS Quilt Project) to Philadelphia, and specifically to a Latino community in a large metropolitan city, at that time a first for the Names Project.