Spaces of Encounter: In Conversation

Moderated by Alyse Tucker: Spaces of Encounter exhibition curator and NYU Steinhardt Visual Arts Administration MA

PANELISTS
Danicia M. Malone | Arts & Culture Ambassador, Urban Planner and PhD candidate at Temple University
Curry J Hackett | Interdisciplinary Artist and NYU Steinhardt Clinical Professor

Dr. Matthew Kenyatta | Director and Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programming at Temple Contemporary

This conversation is in collaboration with the Art Business Society and Other Content
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION
What does public space ask the body to believe about safety, care, and belonging?

Spaces of Encounter is an exhibition that explores public spaces across North America, South America and the Caribbean through the lens of public art. It sees space and place as socially produced; focusing on the ways in which Black imagination from across the diaspora has redistributed power and presence by way of creativity.

“For Black residents navigating environments marked by surveillance, neglect, or misrecognition, aesthetic conditions operate as cumulative exposures that influence how safety, care, and civic participation are felt in the body.”

Rather than treating public spaces as neutral or universally accessible, Spaces of Encounter operates from the premise that Black spatial experience in the United States has been shaped by exclusion, surveillance, displacement, and resistance. Public, artistic, spatial encounters are positioned as critical sites where these forces are negotiated, contested, and reimagined. At the center of the exhibition is the research of Danicia Monét Malone, whose Public Art Censuses in Indianapolis, Albuquerque, and Cartagena operate within a Black spatial epistemology that prioritizes presence, visibility, and lived experience as forms of knowledge and expression. Her concepts of cultural literacy in the built environment and the ministry of presence align with scholarship that frames space as a site of care and future-making. Taken from her research, Malone states, “Streets, walls, facades, and public artworks do not merely decorate cities; they condition perception, behavior, and belonging through repeated encounter.” Through the collection and display of artworks, ephemera, artifacts, and sculptural works,

Spaces of Encounter encourages viewers to ask themselves who is permitted to linger, who is rendered out of place, and how alternative spatial practices can be reimagined and enacted in the urban environment.

Opening Reception May 9th | 2-6PM | Temple Contemporary Gallery | 2001 N 13th St, Philadelphia, PA 19122

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Alyse Tucker Bounds