The 2024 Lewis-Ezekoye Distinguished Lecture will feature a conversation between award-winning multimedia and visual artist Marilyn Nance and accomplished scholar of photography Oluremi C. Onabanjo. Nance is best known for her photography and photojournalism, which has been published in a number of national newspapers and journals, as well as part of permanent collections including (but not limited to) the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The significance of her work has garnered heightened attention due to the recent publication of Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos (2022) edited by Oluremi C. Onabanjo, who is an Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). An article in the New York Times in October 2022, entitled “A Shining Moment of Pan-African Promise in a New Book,” presented the extensive nature of the impact of Nance’s photographs and the photographic archive and legacy of Nance’s work itself (including her photographs from FESTAC ’77 in Lagos, Nigeria).
This conversation between Nance and Onabanjo centers the importance of photographic and archival work in documenting the history of Black internationalism, Pan-Africanism, and unique moments in the cultural history of the United States and throughout the African Diaspora. It also embodies an archive of images of late 20th century African American life. The 2024 event features the collaboration and collegiality of two women creatives of African descent in a way that honors and reflects the spirit of this lectureship named for the sustained, collaborative friendship of two Barnard alumnae—Denise Jackson Lewis ’66 and Adaeze Otue Ezekoye ’66.