#20: Curator, educator, entrepreneur, Erika Dalya Massaquoi on being a hybrid, advocacy, & ethics in the garment industry

Erika Dalya Massaquoi is a curator, educator, and entrepreneur. Erika’s curatorial work includes shows for the Frye Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) List Visual Arts Center, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She has held curatorial positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of the Moving Image.

She has taught new media, cinema, and contemporary art classes at Yale University, New York University, and The New School for Social Research. She also served as the Assistant Dean of the School of Art & Design at The Fashion Institute of Technology (FiT).

Erika and I discuss the benefits of growing up in the warmth of an uplifting community where her creative interests were met with encouragement, black was beautiful, her experiences being told she’s “over qualified” for positions, and how she and her husband navigate family time in conjunction with their careers. Erika shares how she’s become more open to sharing her experience and her story, parenting, moving across the country, adjusting to new environments.

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Links referenced in this episode:

More on Claire Partington’s Taking Tea at SAM: http://seattleartmuseum.org/visit/calendar/events?EventId=63663, https://youtu.be/bSnTkA8nc10

Rinny "Riot" Perkins' “Bad Bitch on Anti Depressants” for #MentalHealthAwareness month: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxBZ9gbll_7/

"Disguise" https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/Documents/Disguise%20Educator%20Resource%20List.pdf, https://www.artsy.net/show/seattle-art-museum-disguise-masks-and-global-african-art

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