Bayeté will be joined on stage by Kevin McDonald, UVA’s new Vice-President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for a conversation about black identity and representation.

Bayeté Ross Smith is a photographer, interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator from Harlem, New York. His work explores issues of identity and representations of African-American culture.  Mr. Smith is a faculty member at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the International Center of Photography. He is a Presidential Leadership Scholar, a member of TED Residency class three, and an inaugural POV/New York Times embedded mediamaker, a collaboration between both institutions.

Bayeté’s work is in the collections of The Smithsonian Institution, the Oakland Museum of California, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and The Brooklyn Museum. He has exhibited internationally with the Goethe Institute (Ghana), Foto Museum (Belgium), the Lianzhou Foto Festival (China), and America House in (Ukraine), among many others. His collaborative projects “Along The Way” and “Question Bridge: Black Males” have shown at the 2008 and 2012 Sundance Film Festival, respectively. His work has also been featured at the Sheffield Doc Fest in Sheffield, England and the L.A. Film Festival.

This event is made possible through the generous support of UVA Arts, the Bama Works Fund, Andy & Kelly Block Fundy, and Ting Charlottesville.