By Any Means - Alma Lewis

“By Any Means” stands as a contemporary art series that delves deep into the profound impact of Black culture and art on our society. It serves as an intellectual forum where artists, cultural visionaries, and wordsmiths converge to exchange profound insights and resources. This assembly bridges the gap with the broader art world, nurturing a commitment to make sure that Pittsburgh’s cultural institutions authentically mirror our city’s diversity in their assets, contributors, and decision-shaping personalities.

The By Any Means 2023/2024 Speaker Series is presented by ALMA | LEWIS.

Bread & the Contours of Capitalism: Dinner - Alma Lewis

November 11, 2023: Jessica Lynne

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The Believer, Frieze, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Oxford American, where she is a contributing editor. She is the recipient of a 2020 Research and Development award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, a 2020 Arts Writer Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation, and the inaugural recipient of the Beverly Art Writers Travel Grant awarded in 2022 by the American Australian Association.

Jessica is currently an associate editor at Momus. Alongside Rianna Jade Parker, she is co-author of the forthcoming publication, Image and Belief: An Unfinished History of Black Artists (Frances Lincoln/Quarto Books, 2024).

Photo Courtesy of Laurent Chevalier

January 20, 2024: Michael Findlay

Michael Findlay is a Director of Acquavella Galleries in New York, a poet, essayist, and author of The Value of Art – Money, Power, Beauty (Prestel) and Seeing Slowly – Looking At Modern Art (Prestel). A memoir, Portrait of the Art Dealer as a Young Man – New York in the Sixties will be published by Prestel in 2024.

From 1968 to 1970 Mr. Findlay directed one of the first galleries in the SoHo district of New York City and established his own gallery there from 1971-1977. He was the first dealer in the United States to show the work of Joseph Beuys, Sean Scully and other European artists and gave American artists such as John Baldessari, Hannah Wilke, Stephen Mueller and Billy Sullivan their first solo exhibitions as well as representing veteran Abstract Expressionist Ray Parker.

In 1984 he joined Christie’s auction house and was head of the Impressionist and Modern paintings department until 1992 when he became International Director of Fine Arts and a member of Christie’s Board of Directors.

Since 2001 Mr. Findlay has served on the Art Advisory Panel for the Internal Revenue Service of the Treasury Department of the U.S. Government. He is on the Board of Directors of the New York Foundation for the Arts, The British Schools and Universities Foundation and a former President of the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation. He is on the Advisory Councils of the Max’s Kansas City Project. In 2022 Findlay was appointed by President Biden to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee at the State Department and he received the 2023 Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Appraisers Association of America.

Photo by Victoria Findlay Wolfe

March 23, 2024: “To Turn Adversity into Advancement” Dr. Kelli Morgan

In this lecture, Dr. Kelli Morgan discusses some specific ways that she’s worked to turn severely adverse conditions into opportunities for advancement for students, colleagues, and the field of African American art and visual culture at large.

Dr. Kelli Morgan is the recently appointed Senior Curator and Interim Vice-President of Exhibitions and Programs at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, MI. Over the last decade, her scholarly commitment to the investigation of anti-blackness within American art and visual culture has demonstrated how traditional art history and museum practice work specifically to uphold white supremacy.

Besides her own curatorial experience, she mentors emerging curators and regularly trains staff at various museums to foster best practices in collection management, exhibitions, community engagement, and fundraising. She is a leading and influential voice in furthering museum practice and has previously held curatorial positions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Photo by Tyrone Myrick

May 11, 2024: Martha Jackson Jarvis

Martha Jackson Jarvis is a sculptor and mixed-media artist. Born in 1952, Martha Jackson Jarvis grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. She studied at Howard University and received a BFA degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a MFA from Antioch University. Jackson Jarvis also studied mosaic techniques and stone cutting in Ravenna, Italy. Her sculptures have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Studio Museum of Harlem, N.Y. Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island, N.Y.; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Anacostia Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Tretyakov Gallery Moscow, U.S.S.R.

Photograph by Grace Roselli