Curator Talk

Some American Dreams: Conversation with Zindzi Harley and Hilde Nelson

April 25, 2026
12:00 pm to 2:00 pm

A salon style wall installation of photographs of varying sizes and orientations. The photos are portraits of Black individuals posing with various jewelry, costume, and props.
Robert Pruitt, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Untitled Photographs, 2011. Archival pigment prints on rag paper, dimensions variable. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.

Join independent curator Zindzi Harley for an thematic unpacking of memory, destination, and myth within the exhibition Some American Dreams. Following a self-guided tour of the show, join Harley and exhibition curator Hilde Nelson for a talk in the museum’s Forum.

Learn more about works from artists Kara Walker, Alison Saar, Rose B. Simpson, Glenn Ligon, Robert Pruitt, and more while exploring the American project through the lens of 1986 essay “Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dreams” by poet June Jordan.

12:00–1:00 pm | Self-guided tour, Second Floor Gallery
1:00–2:00 pm | Conversation, Harry I. Feldman Forum, First Floor

Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Some American Dreams.

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Event Information

April 25, 2026
12:00 pm to 2:00 pm

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Second Floor Gallery and Harry I. Feldman Forum

Free | Suggested donation of $10
Advance registration encouraged

RSVP

About the Participants

A profile portrait of Zindzi Harley, a Black woman with a head scarf and glasses.Zindzi Harley is an independent curator, creative director, and founder of Zindzine, an arts publication and curatorial agency. Harley’s research examines the influence of Afrofeminist epistemologies and womanist philosophy on decolonization in contemporary museums, explored through the interconnected lenses of craft, creolization, and technologies of the erotic. Harley formerly served as Assistant Curator at the African American Museum in Philadelphia where she worked on exhibitions such as Derrick Adams: Sanctuary and Vision & Spirit: Black Artists in the Bank of America Collection. She received her B.A. from the University of Kentucky and M.A. from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Harley is an alumna of the Studio Museum in Harlem Museum Professionals Seminar and a Ph.D student and David C. Driskell Fellow at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. 

A portrait of a young woman smiling in front of a painting.
Photo: Trey Burns

Hilde Nelson is a fourth-year PhD student in the History of Art department at Bryn Mawr College, where her work considers questions of visuality and alterity in contemporary time-based media. She is the former Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), where she curated Naudline Pierre: What Could Be Has Not Yet Appeared, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. At the DMA, she contributed to exhibitions of works by Ragnar Kjartansson, Alex Katz, Sheila Hicks, Wanda Koop, Sandra Cinto, Julian Charrière, and Ja’Tovia Gary, and other group exhibitions. She has also held positions at Creative Time, Julius Caesar Gallery, and the Williams College Museum of Art. Nelson’s writing has been published in the Visual Resources journal and in exhibition catalogues at the DMA. She received her BA from the University of Chicago and her MA from the Williams College Graduate Program.