As, Not For: Dethroning Our Absolutes : Curated by Jerome Harris

As, Not For is an incomplete historical survey of work created by African-American graphic designers over the last century. Curated by Jerome Harris, the exhibition highlights select designers who utilize modernist and Bauhausian methods or more intuitive techniques to create work that ranges from commercially accessible design to avant-garde graphic experimentation. These practitioners are absent in too many classroom lectures and their methods go mostly invisible or uncredited in the field. This exhibition aims to promote the inclusion of neglected Black practitioners and their developed methodologies and to challenge the practitioners and their developed methodologies and to challenge the ubiquity of White and anti-Black aesthetics in our designed world.

Harris will be working with MCAD students on a zine workshop on Saturday, October 19 and the students will be installing the exhibition in the Concourse Gallery at MCAD on Saturday afternoon. In addition to having the posters on view at MCAD, a selection will also be on view concurrently in the Hennepin Theatre District at 800 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis. 

Jerome Harris is a graphic designer, educator, writer, and curator originally from New Haven, Connecticut, and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University and a BA from Temple University. Harris is the Design Director of Housing Works, a non-profit organization fighting the dual crises of HIV/AIDS and homelessness in New York City. His touring exhibition, As, Not For, has been highlighted on Afropunk, AIGA Eye on Design, and Cooper Hewitt, and reviewed in Bmore Art, Creative Review, and Dexigner. Harris DJs under the moniker DJ Glen Coco, and maintains an ongoing choreographic practice that he shares on Instagram at @32counts.