RICHMOND, VA.- The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University announces the publication of
Living to Learn: Art & Education for the Common Good, a multi-author study of 25 years of contemporary art, and
Dear Mazie,: Sanctuary, Speculation, and Sky, an experimental reader that explores the legacy of artist and educator Amaza Lee Meredith (1895-1984).
Jessica Bell Brown, Executive Director, remarks “The ICA is committed to extending the dialogue and exchange of artist collaborations and exhibitions through our growing cadre of publications. Together, these new sterling releases underscore the power of art and education to reflect the artists, thinkers, institutions, spaces and relationships that make it possible.”
Living to Learn: Art & Education for the Common Good is edited by VCU Associate Professor of Painting and Printmaking Noah Simblist and published by Inventory Press through generous support from the Teiger Foundation. This multi-author volume presents the work of over 70 artists, curators, collectives and scholars who address contemporary art as a site of learning in the 21st century. Building on earlier histories of education as civic service for the common good, it focuses on the last 25 years while exploring the future of art education as a practice unfolding both in and beyond school. The book’s case studies reveal how innovations in education have a dynamic relationship with artistic practice, alternative arts organizations, universities, museums and biennials. Contributors include: Helmut Batista, Jonathas de Andrade, Magnus Ericson, Gordon Hall, Pablo Helguera, Prem Krishnamurthy, Marilia Loureiro, Lola Malavasi, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Sarah Rifky, Pelin Tan, Christine Tohmé, Jalal Toufic and Caroline Woolard.
Dear Mazie: Sanctuary, Speculation, and Sky, to be released on April 7, 2026, is edited by ICA Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs Amber Esseiva and published in concert with the Center for Art, Research and Alliances. Featuring previously unpublished photos, blueprints and letters, the book draws inspiration from the archives of Amaza Lee Meredith, an artist, educator and the first known Black queer woman to practice as an architect in the United States. Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1895, Meredith was denied formal architecture training due to her race and gender but went on to design landmark structures, including Azurest South, 1939, in a modernist style never before seen in Virginia. Also an accomplished painter and teacher, in 1935 she founded the fine arts department at the historically Black college Virginia State University, which she chaired until her retirement. Through essays, conversations and artistic interventions from artists, architects, historians, and Meredith’s former students, colleagues and friends, the publication situates her life and work within broader histories of placemaking, gender, sexuality and Black love.
Dear Mazie accompanies the traveling group exhibition of the same name, which originated at the ICA at VCU (September 2024–March 2025) Both the exhibition and the book take Meredith’s expansive letter-writing practice as a conceptual framework for epistolary responses in the present. The book reflects the responses of the 11 artists, architects and designers who contributed to the exhibition: AD—WO (an art and architecture collective founded by Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu), The Black School (Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters), Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Kapwani Kiwanga, Abigail Lucien, Practise (James Goggin and Shan James), Tschabalala Self, and Cauleen Smith. It also includes contributions from architectural scholar Craig Wilkins, artist and writer Charisse Pearlina Weston, architect Mario Gooden, and architectural historian Mabel Wilson; interviews with AD—WO and Alexis Pauline Gumbs; oral histories by Joel Howard, Regenia Perry, Reverend Grady Powell, and Steve Williams; as well as reprints of texts by acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead and poet and civil rights activist Anne Spencer.
In her own letter dedicated to Meredith, Esseiva, who conceived and curated the exhibition, writes: “I’ve come to think of you not only as a builder of buildings, but also a builder of emotional architecture. You were a designer of intimacy, someone who stitched beauty and survival into every wall and every student. And for me, Dear Mazie, began there—not in chronology or artifact, but in atmosphere. I wanted to write you back into the room. And maybe sit there with you.”
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