Join artists Lava Thomas and Mildred Howard for a conversation about their experiences with public art commissions in the Bay Area. Reflecting on the role of artists in envisioning spaces for collective remembrance, Thomas and Howard will discuss questions raised by their respective involvements in the public art process: Who really controls the selection of public artworks? How might we reimagine public visual landscapes to be equitable and inclusive?

Bay Area–based artist, activist, and educator Mildred Howard has permanent large-scale works on view at the San Francisco Airport, in the Western Addition and downtown San Francisco, and at the Richmond BART station. Her large piece The House That Will Not Pass for Any Color Than Its Own will be mounted in Battery Park City in 2020.

Award-winning artist Lava Thomas’s practice spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, and centers around notions of visibility, resilience, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma, and oppression.

For more information, visit artsdesign.berkeley.edu.