Affinity Group Virtual Talk with Assistant Curator Darnell-Jamal Lisby

Join the CMA’s newest assistant curator, Darnell-Jamal Lisby, for a virtual talk exclusively for Affinity and Affiliate Group members. Darnell is a fashion historian whose mandate is to conduct fashion-related exhibitions that draw from art collections across all curatorial departments. In his talk, he plans to share more about his role and potential plans for the next chapter of the CMA.

Before coming to Cleveland, Lisby was an education coordinator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where he organized programming for advanced design audiences and adults, including the museum’s first virtual—and best-attended—symposium, “Fashion, Culture, Futures: African American Ingenuity, Activism, and Storytelling.” Prior to Cooper Hewitt, Lisby worked at an array of institutions in New York City, including the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where as a MuSe intern, he helped research the 2018 exhibition Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. He also taught in the Fashion Institute of Technology master’s program in fashion design, fortifying emerging designers with the historical knowledge they require to pursue fruitful careers.

As a curator, Lisby served as an advisor for the 2021 exhibition Voices of Fashion: Black Couture, Beauty, and Styles at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and was the sole fashion historian on the curatorial team for Willi Smith: Street Couture at Cooper Hewitt. He has published extensively on numerous academic and mainstream platforms, including the Fashion and Race Database, Cultured magazine, and Teen Vogue.

Contemporary Art Society, Friends of African and African American Art, Textile Art Alliance, and Womens Council members will receive a digital invitation. 

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