Diedra Harris-Kelley

Diedra Harris-Kelley is Co-Director of the Romare Bearden Foundation, the non-profit organization carrying forward the legacy of one of the greatest American visual artists.

Harris-Kelley earned a BA in Art from California State University, Long Beach, and an MFA from University of Michigan. She currently teaches a seminar course at Barnard College, and has taught studio art at New York University, Parsons School of Design Studio Program, and for alternative high school and elementary school programs; as well as conducted professional development workshops and lectures on art. She is the author of “Revisiting Romare Bearden’s Art of Improvisation,” published in Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University, 2004); and was a member of the curatorial team of Jazz at Lincoln Center from 2009 to 2012.

Harris-Kelley’s own artwork has been published, most recently shown in a solo exhibition at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Arts, Snug Harbor, NY; For the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Winter 2018 Postcard series, her entry “Playhouse Collage with Monk-118th St” highlighted Minton’s jazz club.