Reading and Conversation

Topical Cream

with Ebony L. Haynes, Zoë Hopkins, Habiba Hopson, and Darla Migan

Wednesday, January 22, 6:30pm
Géza, 306 Maujer
Habiba Hopson in Kindergarten class, c. early 2000s. Photographer unknown.

This program is the culmination of Ebony L. Haynes’s tenure as the 2024 Editor-in-Residence of the New York-based digital magazine Topical Cream. One of Topical Cream’s marquee initiatives to support new modalities for art criticism, the Editor-in-Residence program, was developed in response to the urgent need for institutional support for criticism and experimental journalism in 2021.

Featuring readings and a panel conversation with Haynes’s commissioned writers Zoë Hopkins, Darla Migan, and Habiba Hopson, the evening will highlight the magazine’s editorial year and its mission of supporting women and gender nonconforming artists and writers.

The program will be moderated by Ebony L. Haynes and will center on Zoë Hopkins’s “In Excess of Speech”, Habiba Hopson’s “Who Gets to Decide?: Cancel Culture and Museums", and Darla Migan’s “'Modern is How My Mother Made Me’: The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism”, all published over the past year.

Amant programs are always free. RSVPs are required. Check-in for Topical Cream will start at 6:30pm on Wednesday, January 22 in Géza, located at 306 Maujer.

Ebony L. Haynes is a writer and curator from Toronto, Canada. She is presently based in New York where she is Senior Director at David Zwirner and leads the gallery’s 52 Walker space in Tribeca. Haynes is responsible for many critically acclaimed exhibitions such as Kandis Williams: A Line; Tiona Nekkia McClodden: MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY; Bob Thompson: So let us all be citizens; Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L: Impossible Failures; Invisible Man; EBSPLOITATION; and The Worst Witch. Haynes is the co-curator of the 2024 Triennial at MOCA Toronto. Previously she held positions as curator for the inaugural Fine Arts MFA exhibition for first-year students at The Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; visiting curator and critic at the Yale School of Art in the Painting and Printmaking program; as well as director at Martos Gallery, New York, and Shoot The Lobster, New York and Los Angeles. Haynes sits on the boards of Artists Space, New York, and the New Art Dealers Alliance. She has participated in numerous public talks and symposiums at various institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and has contributed her writing to multiple catalogues and publications. She also runs Black Art Sessions, an online “school” that offers free professional practice classes to Black students worldwide. Zoë Hopkins is a writer and critic based in New York. She is currently working on her MA in modern and contemporary art at Columbia University, where she researches conceptual art of the black diaspora. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Frieze Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtReview, Jupiter Magazine, and Hyperallergic, as well as several exhibition catalogs.Habiba Hopson is a curator and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s currently senior curatorial assistant at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where—along with hosting the Museum’s first podcast New Additions—she supports the research and planning of curatorial projects for the Museum’s new building. Darla Migan, Ph.D., is a philosopher, critic, and curator. She has published reviews on solo exhibitions by Faith Ringgold, Abigail DeVille, Tau Lewis, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Akeem Smith, and Stacy Lynn Waddell. Since completing her dissertation on the Harlemite Dr. Adrian Margaret Smith Piper, her research has expanded to include the shifting conditions of global art markets. She is an alumnus of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a recipient of an Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant, and a recipient of the Rabkin Prize in arts journalism. Dr. Migan curates the experimental art gallery Variable Terms and teaches the open online course Philosophy for Artists.
1/7