Sheldon Scott

Better days don’t just come. Better days are built.

📣 May Day at the Driskell Center! Beyond the Stars & Stripes Join us May 1, 5–7 p.m. for a special panel conversation with artists June Edmonds, Mark Thomas Gibson, and Sheldon Scott, moderated by co-curator Dr. Nicole Archer. Don’t miss this powerful discussion bringing art and ideas into conversation. “America Will Be!” and its programming are made possible through the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art. @terraamericanart @darthgibson @sheldonascott @juneeecee Register via Eventbrite. Link in bio. Image Credit: June Edmonds, Four Years in the White House Flag, 2019-2021. Courtesy of the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art. ©June Edmonds. Photo by @peted301 - Anything Photographic. #DriskellCenter #PanelDiscussion #ArtEvent #UMD #Blackart Image Credit: June Edmonds, "For Carney & The 54th (a Memorial), I, III, V, & IV" (2019), courtesy of The Rodney M. Miller Collection. Installation photography by Pete Duvall - Anything Photographic. @peted301 [Alt text: Installation view of four dark-toned, draped canvas paintings by June Edmonds displayed on a white gallery wall at the Driskell Gallery.]

Hey All! Woolly @woollymammothtc Connectivity Artist-In-Residence inviting you to an awesome Sunday of programming. We’ll be hosting DC Drag: Birds of a Feather, “The Swann Town Hall,” an interactive, call-and-response based Town Hall experience like no other! Bear witness to “The Swann,” a new contemporary chamber opera by award-winning composer, musician, and performer Tamar-kali, @tamar_kali inspired by the life and times of William Dorsey Swann. A formerly enslaved gender bending denizen of our nation’s capital, Swann was the first known person dubbed a “queen of drag” and the first American on record to pursue legal and political action to defend the LGBTQIA+ community’s right to gather. The event will be at Eaton Hotel @eatonhotel.dc in the Crystal Room, located at 1201 K St. NW. Then join us for @sashavelour show at Woolly at 8pm! Ticket links are in bio!

Last weekend to see “Reclaiming My Time” at @nmaahc

Congrats to the brilliant @lionelcruet ! 42nd and Bryant Park!

Thanks to @joynerinstitute for Gullah and African Diaspora Studies for bringing me home last week to share what I’ve learned of my world from the outside. It offered me the invaluable opportunity to share with my own family, some of what I’ve learned and all that they have lived as Gullah/Geechee people. Subject-Matter-As-Audience is the most rewarding (and risky) speaking engagements you could imagine. No panel of scholars could offer the bona fide of a head nod, “um huh” or “dat’s right” from the primary source. The lecture “Gullah Geechee Culture and the Institution: Reciprocal Relationships and the Rejection of Extractive Scholarship Practices”, was personal; at some points painful and often empowering. Not the things you necessarily expect from such a presentation. But that lack and in some cases the lack any further humanity could represent larger problems with this model. What could the world of research look like if you had to look in the eyes of the people you are claiming to expertly know while presenting the data you’ve gathered and interpreted? I’m claiming the W for this one. #gullahgeechee #hunnahdem #joynerinstitute

Fascinating discussion last night with Khalil Joseph, video director for Beyoncé and others, on his new full length film BLKNWS: terms and conditions. Should be streaming soon, a mind blowing film that presents history and blackness and just interesting stuff like a music album with a lot of sampling. It has to be seen to be understood!

Hunnah too proud to announce my first lecture at home! So thankful to the Joyner Institute for Gullah and African Diaspora Studies @joynerinstitute for the invitation to share. This is a part of their Gullah Geechee Community Day programming. The lecture, “Gullah Geechee Culture and the Institution; Setting the Framework for Reciprocal Relationships and Rejection of Extractive Scholarship Practices” will be on Saturday, February 21st from 1:15-2:15pm at the Horry County Library Admin. Building in Conway. Always an honor to talk about my people, but this opportunity to crack teet wit hunnah dem is the highest duty of my practice as an Artist. Link to schedule in bio. #gullahgeechee #hunnahdem

Opening 2 shows this weekend!!! First is a new performance and artwork commissioned by @driskellcenter at University of Maryland’s show, “America Will Be“ that opens on Friday, February 6, 2026 from 5-7PM “….and to the Republic..., the performance of an inconvenient American Beauty”, is an ambient time-based piece on the infiniteness of the threading of the plenty, that compose the United States. This presentation of a “living flag” foregrounds the most critical feature of the flag as its insistence on its own evolution and that its call for allegiance insists its followers evolve as well. The piece asks the viewers to choose a color of thread that represents the complexions of your Americanness. That thread will be deployed to bind the country to its ideals. “America Will Be” will be on view at The Driskell Center gallery from February 9 through May 8, the exhibition will open with a public reception on February 6 from 5 to 7 p.m. Preview and opening reception, featuring a commissioned performance by the artist Sheldon Scott, will be held in The Driskell Center Gallery on Friday, February 6, 2026, 5 p.m. - 6 p.m. America Will Be! is curated by Dr. Nicole Archer (Montclair State University) and Dr. Jordana Moore Saggese (University of Maryland, College Park). Significant support for the exhibition is provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art, with additional support from the Maryland State Arts Council () and the University of Maryland’s Arts for All initiative. “Humanist Touch: Works from the Weber Collection” opens at Katzen Museum at American University on Saturday, February 7 from 6-9PM. Curated by Laura Roulet, these works from the Weber collection reflect Joan and Bruce Weber’s long engagement with contemporary DMV artists and galleries. When they describe their collection, a strong sense of community emerges, one enriched by personal ties to the artists and by the many conversations, visits, and encounters that shaped their choices. @driskellcenter @univofmaryland @aumuseum_katzen @americanuniversity @connersmithdc

One week out✨✨ America Will Be! opens soon at The Driskell Center. Mark your calendar and join us on February 6, from 5–7 p.m. Featuring a special performance by artist Sheldon Scott @sheldonascott Support provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art @terraamericanart , the Maryland State Arts Council (msac.org) @mdartscouncil , and Arts For All @umdartsforall . #mdartscouncil #artsforall #terra #blackart #driskellcenter

Join us on December 19th at 6:30pm in the Rehearsal Hall for a special conversation between Woolly Mammoth Artist in Residence Sheldon Scott and Chinedu Felix Osuchukwu! Hear from these two incredible DC visual artists as they discuss Osuchukwu’s current exhibition at Woolly, “Works on Paper: In the Moment.” After the event, head upstairs to the box office to grab a rush ticket for HoHoHoHaHaHa at 8pm!

Closing soon on Saturday Nov 29th, a group show I organized with love…Body Language at Chela Mitchell Gallery in Washington, DC, brings together new and recent works by Holly Bass, Zoë Charlton, and Sheldon Scott. Across drawing, video, and installation, the artists consider the body as both personal archive and public instrument - an antenna for experience, a register for memory, and a site where meaning is sent, received, and re-shaped. At once intimate and communal, body language is a timely signal: a current moving through homes, streets, and institutions; a communication measured in gestures, habits, posture, and presence. Body Language asks: What solidarities, cautions, histories, and futures do we carry in our bodies as we move through city and landscape? How do we “read the room,” and how do rooms read us? The exhibition proposes that we are always processing and gauging one another and the world, while our bodies hold, translate, and project ahead of words we use and know.  Photo credits: Farrah Skeiky #bodylanguage #figurativeartist #hollybass #zoëcharlton #sheldonscott #chelamitchellgallery #maggiemichael #dcartist #baltimoreartist #contemporaryart #figurativeart #bodiesholdmeaning #figureativeart #politicalart #performanceart #allmedia