Nobel Laureate and Princeton Professor, Emerita, Toni Morrison. Photo credit: Lewis Center for the Arts archives
(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and The Toni Morrison Foundation have curated a series of events and conversations that continues the dialogue begun last spring at the symposium, Now is the Time: Artists Go to Work, Toni Morrison's Atelier and the Importance of Artistic Convening and Collaboration. The series is rooted in Morrison's famous quote about challenging times, "This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair." The events take place from October 1-4, 2026 at various collaborating venues in New York City. All events are open to the public with tickets available through each of the venues.
Toni Morrison (1931-2019), Princeton's Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, taught that the measure of a nation is not in its monuments, but in the stories it has the courage to face, explains co-organizers Tina Campt, Princeton's Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor in the Humanities, professor in the Program in Visual Arts and Department of Art and Archaeology, and director of the Princeton Atelier, and Avery Willis Hoffman, artistic advisor for The Toni Morrison Foundation and the Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director of the Court Theatre at University of Chicago.
In this year of the United States' semiquincentennial, they note that to reckon with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is to reckon with freedom declared in words long before it was lived in practice, and grapple with a history that has constantly faced erasure. In reference to Morrison's quote, Campt and Willis Hoffman state, "We invoke her words as our charge in convening artists, thinkers, and communities to collectively reflect on and illuminate the unfinished work this anniversary makes so strikingly apparent."
Morrison created the Princeton Atelier in 1994 inspired by her own collaborations with artists in other disciplines. The Atelier, now directed by Campt, remains committed to the mutually generative forms of inspiration that emerge out of vibrant artistic and intellectual exchanges.
Guests are invited to join artists, curators, conveners, arts supporters, and these New York-based collaborating arts institutions—Park Avenue Armory, The Kitchen, Studio Museum in Harlem, and National Black Theatre—for an extended weekend of specially curated events highlighting the deeply inspirational and much needed creative work being generated by artists in these challenging times.
The series of events includes:
Installation: Instrument Object, an exhibition by Josiah McElheny will be on view on October 1 from 12:00pm to 6:00pm at The Kitchen at Westbeth, 163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft. This installation pays homage to visionary musicians and composers from across the 20th and 21st centuries. In works of sculpture, painting, installation, and drawing, ranging from 2014 to 2026 and never before exhibited in New York City, McElheny translates the work of ten musical artists into visual form. The exhibition is an experiment in animating the inanimate through sound and movement: transforming The Kitchen's loft space into an installation of image, sound, motion, and light, where works unpredictably activate, hum with the sound of motor gears, or encourage visitors to imagine an invisible music. This event is free.
Also on October 1 at The Kitchen at Westbeth, Public Conversation: Giorno Poetry Systems will take place at 7:00pm. McElheny convenes composer Raven Chacon, artist Jennie C. Jones, composer George Lewis, and writer Fred Moten to think about music and limb independence. To do that, each person has prepared some tracks to play and listen to together and discuss. Tickets are $11.91 inclusive of fees (currently sold out).
At Performance: Under Siege on October 2 at 10:00am to 11:00am at Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, playwrights Lynn Nottage and Dominique Morisseau have brought together roughly 32 Black women and Black femme-identifying dramatists to create a monumental work of art—a piece of theater, a collective gesture, built in the style of an "Exquisite Corpse," where each writer responds to a single question from the writer before them. Ticket information will be available soon.
Two more events on October 2 include a Sonic Activation inspired by the recent publication, Thinking from Black: A Lexicon, co-edited by Campt, offered by Immanuel Wilkins, Will Johnson, Saidiya Hartman, Deborah Thomas, Campt, Savannah Shange, and Phoebe Boswell from 5:00pm to 8:00pm at Studio Museum in Harlem. Following the Sonic Activation, artists Terri Lyne Carrington, Staceyann Chin, and Esperanza Spalding discuss how artists are responding to challenging times, with Avery Willis Hoffman. Ticket information for both events will be available soon.
The final event on October 2 will be two performances by the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet featuring Micah Thomas, Ryoma Takenaga, and Kweku Sumbry at 8:00pm & 10:00pm at Village Vanguard, 178 7th Avenue South. Tickets are required for this event through Village Vanguard.
The centerpiece of the weekend is the symposium Now is the Time: Artists Go to Work (II) on October 3 from 12:30pm to 8:00pm at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue. Artist Carrie Mae Weems will provide keynote conversations and performances as part of her ambitious new project to invite 50 artists from 50 states to design "monuments to the future." Tickets are available through the Armory.
The series closes on October 4 with a performance of Sarah Jones' America Who Hurt You? at 2:00pm at Theatre for a New Audience, 262 Ashland Place in Brooklyn. The performance is presented by the National Black Theatre and Theatre for a New Audience in association with Foment Productions, Cinereach, and Jayson Jackson. The performance asks: In a nation divided by competing narratives, who gets to tell the story of America? Tony Award-winner Jones returns to the New York stage with this virtuosic new solo show directed by OBIE Award winner Eric Ting (The Comeuppance) that is hilarious, provocative, and deeply human. Tickets are available through Theater for a New Audience.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Princeton Atelier, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free. Visit The Toni Morrison Foundation website for more information about how the organization is advancing the author's legacy.
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