The Reading Room is a Black art reference library created and curated by Freedmen’s Town Lead Research Fellow Amarie Gipson. The Reading Room is anchored by a collection of over 500 publications and ephemera on Black visual art and cultural production. With an emphasis on the American South, the collection holds exhibition catalogs, artist monographs, critical anthologies, novels and survey texts that provide readers with a multi-century sweep of Black history and culture.

7PM |  Doors open, limited seating available
7:30PM | Talk begins

The Reading Room at POST Houston
401 Franklin Street
Houston, Texas 77021

For questions or concerns regarding safety or accessibility, contact YET Torres, Public Programs and CAMHLAB Manager, at ytorres@camh.org.

Ryan N. Dennis is Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). Her recent projects include Leonardo Drew’s City in the Garden (2020), Betye Saar: Call & Response (2021), Dusti Bonge: Piercing the Inner Wall (2021), and organizing CAPE Artist-in-Resident Shani Peter’s Collective Care for Black Mothers and Caretakers with the local Jackson community. She is the co-curator of the critically acclaimed exhibition, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. Prior to joining the MMA, she served as the Cura­tor and Programs Director at Project Row Houses (PRH) in Houston, where she worked with over 100 BIPOC artists to exhibit their work in the shot-gun houses, she led the creation of the 2:2:2 Exchange Residency Program with the Hyde Park Art Center in Chi­cago and established Project/Site, a temporary, site-specific, commission-based public art program. In 2017, she launched the PRH Fellowship with the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. Dennis earned her master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute with a focus in Curatorial Practice. Her writings have appeared in online and print catalogs, journals and publications nationally and internationally. She has been a visiting lecturer and critic at a number of art schools and institutions and has taught courses on community-based practices and contemporary art at the University of Houston. Most recently she was the co-curator of the 2021 Texas Biennial titled A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon (2021) and the guest art editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.

Amarie Gipson is the 2023 Lead Freedmen’s Town Research Fellow. She is also a Houston-born art worker, writer, and creative entrepreneur. Gipson has held curatorial positions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Renaissance Society (Chicago), The Contemporary Austin, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Independently, her writing has been published in several journals and magazines such as Artforum, ARTNews, ARTS.BLACK, Cite, ESSENCE, Gulf Coast, MUD, and THE SEEN. She created an open format dance party and community called PHYSICAL THERAPY, where she serves as creative director and resident DJ. She is also the former Arts & Culture editor of Houstonia Magazine, where she worked to bring much needed attention to Houston’s art scene. With nearly a decade of experience in the realms of fine art, music and media, Gipson built The Reading Room with a desire to share her deep passion for Black culture. It is a culmination of her professional experience and a labor of love.