Establishing Space: How one African American curator makes room amid shifting DEI priorities

Establishing Space: How one African American curator makes room amid shifting DEI priorities

By lwilliams@semourbanvoices.com - November 24, 2025

By: Amilia I. Estrada aestrada@dailyegyptian.com

Rain falls softly through grumpy grayscale clouds on a Tuesday in early June, the kind that slows the day and sharpens every sound. The drive to Fern Logan’s home curves through a quiet neighborhood that feels like a world away from Carbondale.

Stepping out onto the wet, slate-gray gravel comes with a crisp crunch, the air heavy with the scent of earth and rain. It sounds like the rainforest, water tapping on broad leaves, birds calling in a dozen tones, each note echoing off the green. On the porch, Logan stands perfectly framed by potted plants.

Inside, her home pulses with quiet energy. Every wall holds something — prints, portraits, multi-media pieces. It is much less a house than a living archive. When she talks about her work, her voice carries both calm and conviction, steady as the rain.

“African American women don’t have a space in the art world. They never did. Until maybe just recently,” the 79-year-old curator and photographer said. “So I can’t say I’m reclaiming (space) — establishing, maybe.”

Logan is moving forward with a mission of diversity and inclusivity amid changing national policies. In January, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which directed federal agencies to strip diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility language from grants and contracts, according to the Federal Register, the official publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices from the U.S. federal government.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale, which was named a 2024 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award recipient by Insight Into Diversity magazine, according to an Oct. 3, 2024, SIU System news release, is feeling the shift.

“They’re doing their best to work around the language — like, if it says, ‘for diverse students,’ then they’ll just take out the word ‘diverse’ and we know internally that we’re going to focus on students in need,” Logan said. “But then the next people come in and say, ‘Well, it doesn’t say that.’ And there goes the money to the rich white kids.”

The fight Logan wages inside galleries mirrors the political fight happening in Washington: a battle over who belongs, and who gets left out.

Logan, a photographer and graphic artist from Jamaica, New York, studied at Pratt Institute and later earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For Logan, this struggle is decades old — throughout her years in art education, she never once had a Black instructor and in art school African American artists were never mentioned.

“I went to art school and never heard about an African American artist, much less an African American woman,” she said.

Her “Artist Portrait Series” was born out of that erasure. The collection presents photographic portraits of trailblazing artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence — figures who profoundly shaped American culture yet were often sidelined in traditional art history narratives. Through her lens, Logan wasn’t merely documenting. She was rewriting the archive.

“There are a lot of people out there that are going to try to cut you down and tell you what your place is,” she said. “And you have to know where your place is yourself, and you have to put yourself where you think you belong.”

“Talking Back,” one of her best-known works, depicts a nude woman from behind, in a posture of punishment under slavery. Down her spine, Logan digitally inserted a row of tongues.  “The woman is in a position of submission, exposing her nude back, which was the position of punishment… So, the tongues are her way of talking back,” Logan said.

The work embodies her broader curatorial philosophy: bold, unapologetic and symbolic. At Artspace 304, where she serves as guest curator, she has already proposed a new invitational to highlight underrepresented artists. “I will invite more ethnic artists to exhibit,” she said. “You know, I have to mix it to keep it politically correct… but if they would just do that — mix it up — it’d be politically correct automatically.

” A recent study published in PLOS One analyzed the collections of 18 major U.S. art museums where researchers found similar disparities: 85% of artists represented were white and 87% were male, while only 1.2% were Black.

PLOS One is a peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal that publishes research across all areas of science and medicine known for making academic studies accessible.

“Third, we find that the relationship between museum collection mission and artist diversity is weak,” Logan said.

U.S. museums remain overwhelmingly white and male. A 2022 Artnet News analysis of 31 U.S. museums reported that between 2008 and 2020, works by Black American artists made up just 2.2% of acquisitions. “Representation isn’t just a buzzword; it’s survival,” Logan said. “You have to be the one who puts yourself in the picture. Or no one else will.”

Lately, Logan has been blending watercolor, photography and digital collage. She mentors younger artists and curators and her message is simple: take up space unapologetically.

Her influence is especially visible in the most recent exhibition she curated, Ink-clusive, at Artspace 304. The show highlighted community members’ tattoos as personal narratives and works of art, including photographs from SIU photojournalism students.

Local photographer Calvin Mennyweathers, who participated in the show, said her mentorship pushed him creatively.  “The way that she tried to foster inspiration by trying to get us to think outside the box versus just taking a regular picture — that really stood out,” Mennyweathers said.

For Logan, this kind of guidance is an essential part of her curatorial practice. Mentorship isn’t separate from the work; it’s woven into how she builds spaces and exhibitions.