Live event canceled: To limit the potential spread of respiratory viruses and safeguard those at highest risk of catching COVID-19, the University of Michigan has canceled all live events with estimated attendance of over 100 people.

As a result, live Penny Stamps Speaker Series events will not take place as scheduled. When possible, our weekly presentations will be available online: video presentations will be announced via email and on the Stamps website (https://stamps.umich.edu/stamps).

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles. Crosby uses collage and photo transfer-based paintings to expose and explore moments of collision, moments of unity, and moments of hybridity found in cross-cultural relationships and in cultures of colonization. Crosby’s work is both personal and universal, as she draws upon her lived experience with interracial marriage, immigration, and dual ideas of home, and the deep traces of colonization in Nigeria. In 2019, Crosby was a participant in the Venice Biennale 58th International Art Exhibition, May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff. Recent solo exhibitions include Njideka Akunyili Crosby: The Beautyful Ones at the National Portrait Gallery in London and Counterparts, which debuted at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2017 before traveling to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, in 2018. She received an honorary doctorate of art from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 2019 and was named among the Financial Times’ “Women of the Year” in 2016.

Supported by University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA).

Image: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “The Beautyful Ones” Series #1c, 2014.  Acrylic, color pencil, and transfers on paper, 61 x 42 inches. Photo: Joshua White Photography