History Break: James Curry
Join James Curry for a discussion on his recent project, Soul Force! The exhibition Soul Force: The Movements of Memory explores the collaboration and connection between Black, Indigenous and Chicano communities and their movements for autonomy, self-determination and liberation in the post-civil rights era in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and the Nation. These three movements sought to address the societal and structural inequalities facing these diverse communities and neighborhoods with more immediacy. The North Side of Minneapolis is primarily where all three groups’ struggles intersected against the structural forces that sought to disenfranchise them.
About the Speaker: James Curry is a multi-disciplinary artist who grew up in Brooklyn Park, MN and studied at The American Film Institute and earned his MFA in Film from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. In 2021, as an editor at KSTP, he and his team were awarded the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for coverage of George Floyd’s murder, uprising and aftermath. He was also awarded the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship for Film in 2021 for his fiction and non-fiction work and in 2022 the Arthur C. McWatt Fellowship. During this fellowship he curated a social justice themed exhibit on Dakota County Black Pioneers. He has written a graphic novella comic based on his ancestor’s narratives with DC/Marvel illustrator Tom Nguyen called Hate Stings published in June 2023. He is chair of Building Remembrance for Reconciliation (BR4R.org) and has partnered with the Dakota County Historical Society on the development of a Black Heritage Trail in Hastings. In 2024 he was awarded a Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery Fellowship and curated his second exhibit there last summer called Soulforce: The Movements of Memory, based on Dr. Jimmy Patino’s work on Red, Brown and Black Power in the Twin Cities. Curry is currently in pre-production for his next non-fiction work that has received a grant from the Minnesota Center for Humanities for a documentary based on Soulforce.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.