About this Event
Join the Hopkins Bloomberg Center for the next installment of the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series featuring Jeffrey Gibson.
A multidisciplinary Indigenous American artist who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw and is of Cherokee heritage, Gibson is renowned for blending Indigenous and Western traditions across painting, installation, video, and performance. In 2024, he became the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo presentation at the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Through his vibrant practice, Gibson explores identity, community, and the vitality of Indigenous cultures.
A fireside chat following the Sam Gilliam Lecture will be moderated by Melissa Walls, a scholar of Couchiching First Nation and Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe heritage, a Bloomberg Associate Professor of American Health, and the co-director of the Center for Indigenous Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 12, at 5 p.m.
5 p.m. — Event Check-in & Pre-reception Begins
6 p.m. — Program Begins
7 p.m. — Program Ends
WHERE: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center
555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
CHECK IN:
• A photo ID is required for entry.
• Each attendee must have a ticket registered in their own name. If you reserved a ticket for someone else, please ensure their name and information are correctly entered.
• A printed ticket is not needed.
• Theater seating is first-come, first-served. Guests are encouraged to arrive early; overflow seating may be available.
ABOUT JEFFREY GIBSON
Jeffrey Gibson (American, b. 1972) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and convener celebrated for his work in painting, installation, video, and performance. For over two decades, he has examined how language, pattern, and music construct meaning, synthesizing Indigenous and Western traditions through vibrant color, complex patterning, and layered sound.
A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Gibson represented the U.S. at the 2024 Venice Biennale with his acclaimed exhibition, Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, which made its U.S. debut at The Broad in Los Angeles in May 2025. In June 2025, he unveiled a site-specific installation at Kunsthaus Zürich. Gibson was selected for the Metropolitan Museum’s 2025 Genesis Facade Commission, and his monumental bronze sculptures were on view until June 2026.
His work is held in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and is an artist-in-residence at Bard College.
ABOUT MELISSA WALLS
Melissa Walls (memengwaa) is Eagle Clan and a first generation descendant of the Couchiching First Nation and Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe (maternal) and of Swedish/German descent (paternal). She grew up in northern Minnesota along the Canadian border and now lives in Duluth, Minnesota where she serves as director of the Center for Indigenous Health’s Great Lakes Hub and is a professor of American Health in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Melissa is trained as a social scientist and is committed to collaborative, community-driven research. She has been working on health equity research projects with tribal nations in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada since 2002. The Great Lakes Hub project focus on topics including mental health epidemiology; culturally relevant, family-based substance-use prevention and mental health promotion programming and evaluation; and promoting better health for families living with Type 2 diabetes.
ABOUT THE SAM GILLIAM LECTURE SERIES
In recognition of the mission of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center—to connect research and discovery with policymaking— provides a platform for speakers to engage in conversation with faculty experts, students, and the community about the role of art in addressing critical social issues.
Made possible by the Sam Gilliam Foundation, the series was established to honor the artistic legacy and social justice commitments of the late Washington, D.C.-based artist Sam Gilliam. The series welcomes prominent artists and thinkers to Johns Hopkins University's Washington, D.C. hub to reflect on the intersections between contemporary art, academia, and public policy, and the role art plays in advancing society.
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Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, United States
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