Join us during FOG Art + Design and SF Art Week as we celebrate our twentieth anniversary with the exhibition Continuum: MoAD Over Time and the central role of MoAD in the constellation of care for Black artists. Lava Thomas will be in conversation with Key Jo Lee about the lineage of support that Black women in particular have provided her in and around MoAD throughout her career as an artist. Women like Mildred Howard, Lizzetta LeFalle Collins, and Denise Bradley championed her work and helped advance her career, with a crucial moment being her first museum show Beyond at MoAD in 2014. Not only was she supported by those who came before her and by her contemporaries, but she has paid forward her gratitude by mentoring younger artists such as Mary Graham who have gone on to exhibit at the museum. Key Jo Lee is part of that curatorial legacy and together with Lava Thomas will honor and pay tribute to those who have made it all possible, while looking ahead to the emerging artists and curators who will continue to shape the next generation at MoAD.

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This program will include a wine reception.

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About the Speakers

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Lava Thomas (@lavathomas) shapes public memory through large-scale drawings, portraiture, monuments, and site-specific installations. Working from civic, family, and historical archives, she renders Black life with precision and reverence, bringing forward lives and narratives that have shaped - and continue to shape - the American story. 

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Thomas’s work has been exhibited nationally at institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Harvard University, the Museum of the African Diaspora, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, SFMOMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University, among others. 

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In fall 2024, the San Francisco Arts Commission unveiled Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman: A Monument to Honor Dr. Maya Angelou at the San Francisco Main Library. The nine-foot public sculpture marked the first monument dedicated to a Black woman in the city’s civic art collection. 

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Thomas has received many honors, including an Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors, a San Francisco Artadia Award, and KALA Art Institute’s Master Artist Award. She was named a YBCA100 Honoree, recognized as one of the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ “Women to Watch,” and most recently received an honorary doctorate from California College of the Arts. Her residencies include Headlands Center for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Center for the Arts. 

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Thomas studied at UCLA’s School of Art Practice and earned a BFA from California College of the Arts, where she serves on the Presidential Advisory Board. She is also a member of the Board of Directors at Headlands Center for the Arts and a former trustee of the Alliance of Artists Communities and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Her work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, SF Chronicle, and The Guardian. 

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Thomas is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco. 

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Key Jo Lee (@keyjolee) is chief of curatorial affairs and public programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. In this role, Lee oversees the strategic direction for the museum’s exhibitions and programs; leads globally on identifying and promoting emerging artists from the African diaspora; and works to expand MoAD’s reach and influence locally, nationally, and internationally.

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She is responsible for the overall management and execution of the museum’s curatorial vision, including its exhibitions, publications, and public and educational programs, and plays an important role in the organization’s outreach, communications, and digital strategy. Lee has a master’s degree from and is PhD candidate in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University.

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Her first book, Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking, was published by Yale University Press and The Cleveland Museum of Art in January 2023.

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This program is presented in conjunction with FOG Art + Design and SF Art Week.