A Creative Monument

Lonnie G. Bunch III is the fourteenth Secretary of the Smithsonian. He assumed his position on June 16, 2019. As Secretary, he oversees twenty-one museums, twenty-one libraries, the National Zoological Park, numerous research centers, and several education units and centers. Two new museums—the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum—are in development. Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). He chronicled the creation of the museum in his book, A Fool’s Errand: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump (Smithsonian Books, 2019), and is the first historian to be secretary of the institution. Since 2024, Bunch has been Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he received France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, in 2021. In 2025, Bunch was named Humanitarian of the Year by Ebony Power 100.

Dr. Chelsea Clinton is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, advocate, and public health expert. As Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, she provides vision and expertise across programs that develop leaders and accelerate solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. Chelsea also serves as the vice chair of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which has helped nearly 30 million people in more than 70 countries access critical HIV/AIDS medications and works across more than 125 countries around the world to build and strengthen sustainable health systems. In addition to her Foundation work, Chelsea is the co-founder of Metrodora Ventures and has written several books for young adults and readers including the #1 New York Times bestselling She Persisted. Chelsea is the host of the podcast, That Can’t Be True with Chelsea Clinton, a show that sorts fact from fiction, especially on issues related to our health. Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford, a Master of Public Health from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, and both a Master of Philosophy and a Doctorate in international relations from Oxford University.

Rhea Combs is an award-winning curator and writer who currently serves as the Senior Curatorial Fellow in Global and Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She previously held museum leadership positions as Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and as Senior Curator of Film and Photography and Director of the Center for African American Media Arts (CAAMA) at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Combs's curatorial practice and writing explore how imagination, subjectivity, and cultural memory shape our understanding of American identity and Black life. Combs has curated and organized numerous exhibitions, including the acclaimed Portrait of a Nation: 2025; The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today; This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance, in collaboration with author and curator Hilton Als; Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, presented in collaboration with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures; and Watching Oprah: The Oprah Winfrey Show and American Culture. Combs’s co-authored publication “Regeneration, 1898–1971” was the recipient of the Association of American Art Museum Curators Curatorial Excellence Award. Other writings on contemporary art, portraiture, visual aesthetics, film and photography have been featured in academic journals, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues.

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay is an Academy Award nominee and winner of Emmy, BAFTA, Sundance, Image and Peabody Awards. Her films include Selma, 13th, Middle of Nowhere, A Wrinkle in Time and Origin. She has created seven television series, including the acclaimed When They See Us and history-making Queen Sugar. Founder of the narrative change collective ARRAY, DuVernay holds honorary doctorates from Yale University and Morehouse College, along with the Great Americans Medal from the Smithsonian Institution. Following multiple terms on the boards of the Sundance Institute and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she currently serves on the American Film Institute Advisory Board in her third term.

Paul M. Farber is the Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab. As a scholar, curator, historian, and cultural strategist, he advances new approaches to monuments, public memory, and civic life. Among his recent curatorial projects are Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2026); Declaration House at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park (2024), co-curated with Anna Arabindan-Kesson and Yolanda Wisher; and Beyond Granite: Pulling Together (2023), co-curated with Salamishah Tillet on the National Mall. Farber is the author and editor of numerous books, including Rising Up (Philadelphia Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2026), Declaration House (Temple University Press, 2026), National Monument Audit (Monument Lab, 2021), and A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). He also created and hosts The Statue, a podcast from WHYY/NPR recognized as a Webby Honoree in Arts & Culture. Farber holds a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan and a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Mellon Foundation, the Board of Directors of A Long Walk Home, and the Advisory Board of the Humboldt Forum.

Alicia believes that Black communities deserve what all communities deserve–to to be powerful in every aspect of their lives. An author, political strategist, organizer, and cheeseburger enthusiast, Alicia founded the Black Futures Lab in 2018 to make Black communities powerful in politics. In 2023, the Black Futures Lab conducted the Black Census Project–the largest survey of Black communities in US history. Alicia is the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against Black people. The Black Lives Matter Global Network now has 40 chapters in four countries. Alicia’s first book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, was released on October 20, 2020, with One World (Penguin Random House).

John Legend is an artist and activist who made history as the first African American man to join the prestigious EGOT club. At the age of fifteen, Legend won an essay competition in which he shared his dream of becoming a star recording artist and using his influence to give back to the community. In 2007, Legend founded The Show Me Campaign, aiming to provide quality education to every child and to address systemic issues in the criminal justice system that disproportionately affect underprivileged communities and minorities. Through his work in education, he discovered a troubling connection: the lack of quality education often channels many young people into the “school-to-prison pipeline.” This realization compelled him to take further action, leading him to launch freeamerica in 2014. This initiative aims to end mass incarceration and assist local governments in addressing racial inequalities in critical areas such as health, criminal justice, education, jobs, and housing. In addition, Legend currently serves on the advisory board of FUSE Corps, The Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Teach For All. He is also on the board of directors for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the board of directors for Harlem Village Academies, and the governing board of Management Leadership for Tomorrow.

Brent Leggs is the eleventh President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has served in the role since 2026. Brent has been with the National Trust for over twenty years, most recently as the founding executive director of its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which has raised over $200 million for the preservation of sites associated with Black history across the country. Brent is a former Resident of the American Academy in Rome, Harvard University Loeb Fellow, 2018 recipient of the Robert G. Stanton National Preservation Award, and author of Preserving African American Historic Places, which is considered the “seminal publication on preserving African American historic sites” by the Smithsonian Institution.

Franklin Leonard is the founder and CEO of The Black List, which he created in 2005 as an annual survey of Hollywood's most-admired unproduced screenplays and has since built into a global platform connecting writers in film, television, fiction, and theater with editors, agents, producers, directors, and financiers seeking new work. More than 500 scripts identified by the annual survey have been produced as feature films, winning 60 Academy Awards from 284 nominations, including four Best Pictures. Before founding The Black List, he worked in film development at Universal Pictures and at the production companies of Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, and Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He serves on the boards of MacDowell, the National Book Foundation, the Gotham Film & Media Institute, and the American Cinematheque. In 2019, he received the Writers Guild of America East's Evelyn F Burkey Award for elevating the honor and dignity of writers. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and raised in Columbus, Georgia.

The Honorable Dr. Marvel McCain Parker, Village of Summit Trustee (4th Term), Assistant Supervisor of 5th Illinois Jurisdiction-West Women’s Department, President of The Wheeler Parker Jr. Foundation, Project Director for the Preserve Roberts Temple Initiative. A self-published author, in 2006 Dr. Parker published her thesis, Breaking the Silence; The Impact of HIV/AIDS on African American Women and the Silence of the Church. In 2008, in furtherance to her commitment to educate communities about the impact of this disease, she published a HIV/AIDS Behavioral Intervention curriculum entitled Listen, Learn, Live. Dr. Parker retired as Director of Community Development for the Village of Summit, Illinois, in 2012 after the successful completion of construction of a 69-unit Senior Citizens Complex and a new Fire Station. In 1992, she and her husband, Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., organized the Summit Community Task Force, Inc., a multi-purpose human service organization to provide alternatives to at-risk youth. In 2002, they completed construction of a Community Service Center dedicated to the memory of Emmett Till, cousin and best friend of Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. They have been married for the past 59 years. They share a ministry at Argo Temple Church of God in Christ in Summit, Illinois, and Belize, Central America, where they are currently building a church in Belmopan.

Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. is Administrative Assistant, 5th Illinois Jurisdiction-West, Superintendent of Good Tidings District, and Pastor of Argo Temple Church of God in Christ, where he has been a member since 1947. Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. is a survivor of the Emmett Till kidnapping and murder in Mississippi in 1955. At age 16, he and his cousin Emmett Till, age 14, traveled to Mississippi for a two-week vacation at his grandfather’s home in Money, Mississippi, to visit with his young uncles. Their trip was abruptly interrupted by the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till, who was taken at gunpoint from the home of Moses Wright. Emmett’s body was found three days later floating in the Tallahatchie River with a seventy-five-pound cotton gin tied around his neck with barbed wire. Rev. Wheeler Parker graduated from Argo High School in 1958 and Molar Barber College in 1959. A graduate of the School of Modern Photography, he moonlighted as a photographer, attended Moraine Valley Community College, H. C. Mason Theological Bible School, Global University, and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He served his country for two years in the U.S. Army as a Medical Specialist. In February 2022, Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. was guest of President Joe Biden at the White House for the signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Bill. On July 25, 2023, he was honored to introduce President Joe Biden at the ceremony for the signing of the proclamation creating the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. He was awarded a Doctorate Degree in Humane Writings from Delta State University in 2025. Married for 59 years to Dr. Marvel McCain Parker.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) is an activist, a legislator, a survivor, and the first woman of color to be elected to Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Throughout her career, Congresswoman Pressley has fought to ensure that those closest to the pain are closest to the power - driving and informing policymaking. As Congresswoman for Massachusetts' 7th Congressional District, she has been a champion for justice and healing: reproductive justice, justice for immigrants, consumer justice, justice for seniors, justice for workers, justice for survivors of sexual violence, justice for formerly and currently incarcerated individuals, and healing for those who have experienced trauma. She has also turned her experience living with alopecia into action, becoming a leading voice fighting to raise awareness and support for the alopecia community across the nation. Congresswoman Pressley currently serves on the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Prior to being elected to Congress, she served on the Boston City Council for eight years and was the first woman of color elected to the council in its 100-year history.

RaMell Ross is an artist and liberated documentarian working across photography, film, essay, sculpture and performance. His work, most often situated in and regarding the Black Belt of Alabama, draws on the Epic Banal, strategic ambiguity, the aleatoric, the ready-made, and subjectivities of time. He has been awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship, was a 2022 Solomon Fellow at Harvard University and Stanley Kelley, Jr., Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. His feature experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening was ranked one of the best documentaries of the 21st century by the International Documentary Association. His narrative feature Nickel Boys was named best film of 2024 by the Atlantic, the New York Times, the New Yorker and Indie Wire. Both films, formally critiquing the camera in American cinema, were nominated for Academy Awards. RaMell holds degrees in Sociology and English from Georgetown University and is an associate professor in Brown University’s Visual Art Department. His work is in various public and private collections such as the Museum for Modern Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Ogden Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and the High Museum.

Born in Columbus, Georgia, and now based in the New York City area, Amy Sherald documents contemporary African American experience in the United States through arresting, intimate portraits. Sherald engages with the history of photography and portraiture, inviting viewers to participate in a more complex debate about accepted notions of race and representation, and to situate Black life in American art. Sherald received her MFA in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art and her BA in painting from Clark-Atlanta University. She was the first woman and first African American to ever receive the grand prize in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; she also received the 2017 Anonymous Was A Woman award and the 2018 Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. In 2018, Sherald was selected by First Lady Michelle Obama to paint her portrait as an official commission for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The same year, she was also awarded the Pollock Prize for Creativity by Pollock-Krasner Foundation, as well as the David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art. In 2025, she was also awarded the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, Harvard's highest honor in the field of African and African American studies. Sherald’s work is held in public collections such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Embassy of the United States, Dakar, Senegal; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, N.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco, CA; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Tate.

Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist based in Brooklyn whose interdisciplinary practice—spanning sculpture, photography, retroreflectives, quilting, and film—examines identity, perspective, commodity, and popular culture. His collaborative projects include Question Bridge, The Truth Booth, The Gun Violence Memorial Project, and For Freedoms, an artist-led organization advancing creative civic engagement. Thomas's public art can be found across the country, including The Embrace on the Boston Common, REACH at O'Hare International Airport, and Duality at The Underline in Miami. His work is held in major public collections such as MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and the National Gallery of Art, and he has mounted solo exhibitions at institutions including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Henry Art Gallery. He holds a B.F.A. from New York University and an M.F.A. from California College of the Arts, along with honorary doctorates from four institutions. Thomas is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, and the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts.

Patrick Weems is a community builder advancing work in memory, justice, and racial healing. He is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi, where he leads efforts to tell the story of Emmett Till through art, storytelling, and historic preservation. Weems has helped elevate Till-related sites to national significance, contributing to the creation of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in 2023. His work focuses on building a network of community-led memorial sites across the Mississippi Delta and fostering partnerships among local communities, artists, and national institutions. Under his leadership, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center has grown as a space for public memory, dialogue, and cultural engagement. Weems holds a master’s degree from the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture. He is a Fellow of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Monument Lab.

Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She holds affiliated appointments with the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis, and the Institute of Fine Arts. At these institutions, she teaches photography, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. Dr. Willis also serves as director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute of African American Affairs. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, contemporary women photographers, beauty, and the photographic history of Slavery and Emancipation. An accomplished author, her publications include The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present. Dr. Willis has curated numerous exhibitions, including “Framing Moments in the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts,” “Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory” with FotoFocus, and “Reflections in Black 25th Anniversary Edition: A Reframing.” Her pioneering work has earned widespread recognition, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, an Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. Fellowship, and a Richard D. Cohen Fellowship at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she was the Robert Mapplethorpe Photographer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. Her recent honors include the 2022 Don Tyson Prize, serving as the Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence, and winning the prestigious 2026 AIPAD Award.