The Brooklyn Museum and Creative Time Announce Convening Exploring Justice, Democracy, and Equitable Futures

Image Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

The convening gathers artists, activists, and scholars to confront urgent questions shaping contemporary political life 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

On October 23, 2026, the Brooklyn Museum and Creative Time will bring together leading voices across art, activism, and scholarship for a timely convening grappling with the most urgent issues shaping contemporary political life—from migration and reproductive justice to mass criminalization and climate change. Through critical dialogue and collective inquiry, the program, titled “In Pursuit of Life,​ Liberty,​ and Happiness,”examines who has historically benefited from the story of US democracy and considers ways to build expansive futures rooted in self-determination, dignity, and freedom. The daylong event culminates the Brooklyn Museum’s initiative Drawing America: US@250, a season of art installations, programs, and partnerships honoring those who have imagined a more equitable future and fought for the promise of our democracy—and those who continue to do so today.

Held in the Brooklyn Museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, the convening is hosted by Bertha Vanayshun, with opening remarks by New York City Council Member Crystal Hudson and a keynote by Chelsea Manning. Doors open at 10 am on Friday, October 23, and the convening will take place from 11 am to 5:30 pm. The schedule is as follows:

LIFE / Beyond Borders: Mapping Movement and Migration Histories

11:30 am–12:30 pm

This conversation considers migration through the lens of the right to life, exploring freedom of movement, safety, belonging, and home making. Situating contemporary struggles for migrant justice within longer histories of colonialism, racism, and exclusion, presenters draw on art, data illustrations, and political organizing to envision futures beyond borders.

Speakers: Mona Chalabi, illustrator and writer; Sky Hopinka, visual artist and filmmaker; Paola Ramos, journalist; moderated by Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, scholar and director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies

Poetry reading by Nicole Sealey

LIBERTY / After Incarceration: Envisioning Abolitionist Futures

3:20–4:20 pm

Nearly two million people in the United States are incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails—the largest known prison population in the world. From conceptual art to community processes for accountability, this conversation recontextualizes the constitutional promise of freedom through an abolitionist lens. Together speakers imagine alternatives to the US culture of punishment and caging that instead foreground justice and repair.

Speakers: American Artist, artist; Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, interdisciplinary artist, writer, and cultural worker; Mariame Kaba, organizer, archivist, and writer; moderated by Jackie Wang, poet and scholar

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS / Presentations

Throughout the day

In dynamic 15-minute presentations on their practices and related projects, speakers contend with our fraught democracy while envisioning future possibilities.

Speakers: Tega Brain, artist and engineer, and Sam Lavigne, artist and educator; Johanna Hedva, artist, musician, and writer; Qween Jean, costume designer and founder of Black Trans Liberation; Dean Majd, artist; Viva Ruiz, artist and founder of Thank God for Abortion

About the Brooklyn Museum

For 200 years, the Brooklyn Museum has been recognized as a trailblazer. Through a vast array of exhibitions, public programs, and community-centered initiatives, it continues to broaden the narratives of art, uplift a multitude of voices, and center creative expression within important dialogues of the day. Housed in a landmark building in the heart of Brooklyn, the Museum is home to an astounding encyclopedic collection of more than 140,000 objects representing cultures worldwide and over 6,000 years of history—from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to significant American works, to groundbreaking installations presented in the only feminist art center of its kind. As one of the oldest and largest art museums in the country, the Brooklyn Museum remains committed to innovation, creating compelling experiences for its communities and celebrating the power of art to inspire awe, conversation, and joy.

About Creative Time

Since 1974, Creative Time has commissioned and presented over 350 ambitious public art projects in partnership with thousands of artists and organizations throughout New York City, across the country, around the world—and even in outer space. Its work is guided by three core values: art matters, artists’ voices are important in shaping society, and public spaces are places for creative and free expression.

Creative Time is acclaimed for the innovative and meaningful projects it has commissioned, from Tribute in Light (2002), the twin beacons of light that illuminate lower Manhattan annually on the anniversary of 9/11, to Kara Walker’s powerful sugar-sphinx, A Subtlety (2014), at the Domino Sugar Factory; Pedro Reyes’s Doomocracy (2016), a theatrical haunted house of political nightmares at the Brooklyn Army Terminal; Chloë Bass’s If you hear something, free something (2025), a sound work in MTA subway stations throughout NYC; and so much more. Based in New York City, Creative Time touches millions, locally, nationally, and internationally, through public programming initiatives like the Creative Time Summit, which has been presented in a variety of locations including Venice, Stockholm, Washington, DC, and Miami. CTHQ, Creative Time’s gathering space for art and politics, offers public programs, artist-led workshops, and free coworking space.

Creative Time is committed to presenting important art for our times and engaging broad audiences that transcend geographic, racial, and socioeconomic barriers.