Xaviera Simmons '05 Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters

Xaviera Simmons’s sweeping body of work centers around photography and includes performance, choreography, video, sound, , and installation. Her interdisciplinary practice is rooted in shifting definitions of landscape; character development; art, political, and social histories; and the interconnectedness of formal processes.

Simmons received her bachelor’s degree from Bard College after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage with Buddhist monks retracing the transatlantic slave trade. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art while simultaneously completing a two-year actor training with the Maggie Flanigan Studio.

Simmons received Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award and Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award, both in 2018. Her work is part of numerous upcoming exhibitions and projects including Sundown at David Castillo Gallery, ; The Restless Earth, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2019); and Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places Commission (2018–19), among many others. Recent solo exhibitions include Convene at Sculpture Center, New York; Overlay at Radcliffe Institute, ; and The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line, at Modern Window, , New York. Current and recent museum group exhibitions include The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; MassArt, Boston; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum; Museum of , Chicago; Prospect.4, New Orleans; Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; ; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Cincinnati Art Museum; and Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco. Her work has been featured in many publications, most recently in Artforum, Artnet News, Bloomberg, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, New York Times, Paper Magazine, and others.

Her works are in major museum and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Guggenheim Museum, and Agnes Gund Art Collection, all in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Studio Museum in Harlem; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; High Museum of Art, ; and Rubell Family Collection, Miami, among others. https://afvs.fas.harvard.edu/people/xaviera-simmons