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Cover of “In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space” by Irvin Weathersby Jr.

Cover of In Open Contempt, 2025. (Photo: Courtesy of the author and Penguin Random House)

Brooklyn Reads: In Open Contempt with Irvin Weathersby Jr.

Thursday, January 16, 2025

7–9 pm

Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor


How do we reckon with ongoing anti-Black racism in the United States, as represented by monuments, street signs, and schools named after slaveowners, segregationists, and white supremacists? In this debut book, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby Jr. engages curators, city planners, and artists—including Brooklyn Museum collection artists Titus Kaphar and Kara Walker—whose work considers the specter of white supremacy in public spaces. From his hometown in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, Weathersby takes us to the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues in Virginia, the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, and a former sugar factory here in Brooklyn. 

This program comprises a reading from the book, a conversation between the author and writer Robert Jones Jr., and a book signing. 

Tickets are $15 ($9 for Members). Not a Member? Join today!