Finding Her Way Back to Art
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What is Black? It is the question at the heart of BLACK WORK: Absence/Absorption, an exhibition curated by Kymberly S. Newberry ’22 MA, ’24 PhD at the University of Richmond, where she serves as a visiting assistant professor of art history.
On view from February through April, the exhibition brought together visual, sonic, and mixed-media works that invited visitors to consider Blackness not simply as identity or color, but as a dynamic, evolving condition.
For Newberry, two works anchored the exhibition: Black queer composer and pianist Julius Eastman’s Feminine, which played continuously throughout the gallery, and a wax cross by artist Sandy Williams IV, cast to the exact dimensions of a cross burned in front of a Charlottesville home in 1959.
“As you come into the room, you look with the color Black, walk with the color Black, think with the color Black, and listen with the color Black,” Newberry says. “By doing so, people begin thinking differently about race.”
The exhibition reflects the interdisciplinary path that has shaped Newberry’s career as a scholar, curator, educator, and actress.
Deeply Curious
Before entering academia, Newberry spent more than two decades in Los Angeles as a working actor.
During that time, she also became the primary caregiver for her mother, who was living with Alzheimer’s disease.
“There isn't a handbook on how to get past your mama leaving you,” Newberry says. “She was my best friend—the love of my soul.”
Her mother’s death marked a profound turning point.
Two friends helped alter the course of her life. One put her on a plane to Paris, where she could grieve while writing in the library of the Centre Pompidou and spending her days in museums and galleries, building what an art collector Newberry admires calls “eye mileage.” Another encouraged her to apply to the Frances Perkins Program at Mount Holyoke College, designed for students of nontraditional age completing their undergraduate education.
She did both.
While earning her bachelor’s degree in international relations, Newberry found herself increasingly drawn toward art history.
“I’m deeply curious and always want to be a student,” she says. “Although my undergraduate degree was not in art history, I immersed myself in the field at every opportunity. I attended lectures, spent countless hours in museums and galleries and studied the work of curators and art historians whose scholarship I admired.”
A North Star
As an undergraduate, Newberry met the late John Bracey, the noted civil rights scholar and longtime University of Massachusetts Amherst professor.
Bracey welcomed her into academic spaces and ultimately encouraged her to pursue graduate study at UMass Amherst, where she earned both her master’s and doctorate in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.
“He was my North Star,” she says. “I am who I am in no small part because of him.”
Graduate school introduced Newberry to another mentor who would reshape her career. While completing her doctorate, she enrolled in a museum studies seminar taught by University Distinguished Professor Emeritus Walter Denny.
“I always say that was the moment I started cheating on international relations,” Newberry says. “I moved from diplomacy to becoming completely immersed in visual art, museums, and material culture. Walter Denny did not just change the course of my scholarship and academic investment; he changed the course of my life.”
The seminar synthesized her longstanding interests in international relations, visual culture, museums, and Afro-American studies, ultimately shaping her doctoral research on the challenges of curating and contextualizing African art in American museums. Those questions continue to animate both her scholarship and curatorial practice.
Imagining Futures That Do Not Yet Exist
Now a visiting assistant professor of art history at the University of Richmond, Newberry continues to create opportunities for students and the broader community to engage with art in new ways.
Alongside curating BLACK WORK, she developed An Apéritif at the Harnett Museum, a public program pairing works from the museum's permanent collection with contemporary African diasporic and African American art to spark conversations across disciplines and communities.
Known to students simply as “Prof. K,” Newberry teaches courses exploring contemporary art, curatorial practice, African diasporic visual culture, and the power of museums to shape public understanding.
“I want students to know that art helps societies remember who they are, and it helps imagine futures that do not yet exist,” she says. “It bears witness when others look away. These are among the lessons I hope my dear young brothers and sisters at the University of Massachusetts carry with them long after they leave the classroom.”
With a gift to the College of Humanities and Fine Arts you can support students like Kymberly Newberry as they discover their passions, connect with inspiring mentors, and find their path forward.
This piece originally appeared on the UMass Amherst Alumni website.