The Will to Adorn is a multi-year collaborative folk cultural research and public presentation project initiated by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. This project explores the diversity of African American identities as expressed through the cultural aesthetics and traditional arts of the body, dress, and adornment. Museum of the African Diaspora was one of five institutions to participate in the 2017 program.

This reception celebrates the efforts of our 2017 students and interns.

‍Speakers include:

Dr. Diana Baird N’Diaye

is a Cultural Heritage Specialist and Curator at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She developed and leads The Will to Adorn: African American Dress and the Aesthetics of Identity, a pan-institutional, multi-sited research project that was a featured program of the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Richard Collins

is the School & Community Outreach Coordinator and the Will to Adorn Director at MoAD. Richard joined MoAD after working the last six years as a classroom teacher in Bay Area K-12 public schools and teaching college  freshman at California State University East Bay while earning his MA in Applied Anthropology.