February 16 – March 8, 2024
Reception March 8, 2024 5-7PM
MSU Union Art Gallery
Created in February 2020 by independent curator and MSU Alumna Asmaa Walton, the Black Art Library was born from Walton’s desire to create a tactile means for communities to engage with Black artists and Black art history. A living archive of global Black creativity, the collection includes over 600 artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, children’s books, artist memoirs, artist biographies, art history texts, and other art related ephemera. As a mobile collection and interactive installation, Black Art Library provides a platform for community accessibility and engagement with the rich legacy of Black art, aesthetics, and history.
To learn more about Black Art Library and ways in which you can contribute, please visit:
Asmaa Walton was born and raised in Detroit, she is an arts educator and ardent developer of a Black cultural archive. In 2017, Walton earned a BFA in Art Education from Michigan State University. In 2018, she received a MA in Art Politics from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. After completing her masters degree, Walton joined Toledo Museum of Art as an Education and Engagement Intern, in 2018. In the same year she was appointed the Museum’s first KeyBank Fellow in Diversity Leadership, a position where she identified opportunities for diversity and equity programming across museums and cultural institutions. In 2019, Walton was appointed Romare Bearden graduate Museum Fellow at Saint Louis Art Museum. In 2020, Walton established Black Art Library which is a collection of publications, exhibition catalogues and theoretical texts about Black art and visual culture. Walton is currently working towards the mobile project becoming a public archive in a permanent space in Detroit, Michigan.
