Dreams of Freedom – "Michael Richards: Are You Down?" book celebration

Dreams of Freedom – Michael Richards: Are You Down? book celebration
Date: Saturday, April 18, 2026
Time: 1:00–5:00 p.m.
Location: Driscoll Education Center at Franconia Sculpture Park

Step into an afternoon of art, memory, and making at Franconia Sculpture Park on Saturday, April 18 from 1:00–5:00 p.m. This immersive program unfolds as a journey—beginning with a warm welcome into the park’s expansive landscape, moving into a live podcast conversation, Dreams of Freedom—Michael Richards: Are You Down?, featuring authors and curators Melissa Levin and Alex Fialho in dialogue with Lissa Jones-Lofgren and MN-based independent curator Esther Callahan. Together, they will reflect on the life and legacy of Michael Richards, tracing themes of flight, diaspora, Blackness, spirituality, and resistance that continue to resonate today.

Following the conversation, audiences are invited to deepen their engagement through a Q&A and an informal reception with a tour of Are You Down?, before transitioning into a hands-on community art experience led by Mudluk Pottery Studio—offering participants the chance to create, reflect, and connect through clay. Richards’s artwork Are You Down?—Franconia Sculpture Park’s only permanent sculpture—is a bronze recast of a large-scale sculpture engaging the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen that was originally displayed during Richards’s fellowship at the park in 2000.

The day closes with collective gratitude, leaving space for what has been shared, learned, and felt.

This is more than a talk—it’s a layered experience of listening, making, and being in community. Join us as we honor Michael Richards’s legacy while building new pathways for connection and creative expression.

Event Schedule

1:00PM Welcome

1:15PM Live podcast recording of Black Market Reads For the smart and free-thinking, Black Market Reads is a podcast featuring conversations with today’s most exciting Black literary voices– a podcast for any one who loves to read, write, and engage. With host Lissa Jones-Lofgren, Black Market Reads is a project of The Givens Foundation for African American Literature.

This live podcast recording will center Michael Richards’s artistic legacy, through a conversation with authors Melissa Levin and Alex Fialho and curator Esther Callahan in dialogue with Lissa Jones-Lofgren.

2:00PM Audience Q&A

2:30PM Informal reception, tour of Are You Down?  Led by Franconia Sculpture Park Executive Director Alex Legeros, take a walk outside to see Michael Richards’s sculpture Are You Down? in its permanent location.

2:30 – 5:00PM Handbuilding with Mudluk Pottery Studio Take time to handbuild your very own sculpture inspired by Michael Richards’s dreams of freedom. Is it a feather, a wing, or an airplane? This is an opportunity to continue the conversation while getting your hands dirty. The first 50 handbuilders receive this experience (including glaze and fire) free of charge; the cost is $10/person after the first 50 are served.

Michael Richards. Photo by Frank Stewart

Are You Down? by Michael Richards.

Photo by Brett Snyder

About Michael Richards & Are You Down?
Michael Richards: Are You Down? is the first monograph on the late artist Michael Richards (1963–2001) and features Richards’s visionary practice developed during a prolific decade from 1990 to 2001. The monograph was co-published in 2025 by the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances (CARA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. Of Jamaican and Costa Rican lineage, Richards was born in Brooklyn, raised in Kingston, Jamaica, and lived and worked between New York City and Miami. An integral member of a generation of Black artists that emerged in the 1990s, Richards produced sculptures, drawings, installations, and video work that gesture toward repression and reprieve and the possibilities of uplift and downfall, often in the context of the historic and ongoing oppression of Black people. Richards passed away on September 11th, 2001 as he was working in his studio in the World Trade Center, which hosted the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s artist residency. Yet Richards’s art and its concerns—Blackness, flight, diaspora, spirituality, police brutality, and the role of monuments—remain timely and prescient decades later.

Franconia Sculpture Park is home to Richards’s artwork Are You Down?—the park’s only permanent sculpture. Are You Down? was created when Richards was an artist in residence at Franconia in the summer of 2000. Originally cast in fiberglass, the sculpture was re-cast in bronze and dedicated to the park permanently in 2012. This highly meaningful celebration acknowledges the 25th anniversary of Richards’ passing in 2001, an artist who has helped to position Franconia’s legacy as a place for deep creation and vision-building.

Event Collaborators
Alex Fialho is a PhD candidate in Yale University’s Combined PhD program in the History of Art and Black Studies. As an art historian and curator, Fialho focuses on modern and contemporary art, Black queer and feminist thought, and AIDS cultural studies. He was a Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, Predoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute, and Luce/ACLS Ellen Holtzman Dissertation Fellow in American Art. Based in Southern California, Fialho is the recently appointed Curator of Collections at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

Melissa Levin is a values-driven arts administrator and artist-centered curator. Levin is currently the inaugural New York City-based Program Officer with the Jerome Foundation, supporting early career artists in MN & NYC. Previously, she worked at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) for more than 12 years, where—as Vice President of Cultural Programs—her role encompassed wide-ranging institutional and artistic leadership, including overseeing LMCC’s artist residencies, exhibitions, and public programming. Levin holds a B.A. with honors in Visual Art and Art History from Barnard College. She currently serves on the boards of the Artist Communities Alliance and Danspace Project.

Fialho and Levin have curated exhibitions together starting in 2014, including Trisha Brown: Embodied Practice and Site Specificity; and (Counter)Public: Art, Intervention, & Performance in Lower Manhattan from 1978–1993. Since 2016, they have curated critically-acclaimed exhibitions dedicated to the late artist Michael Richards’s art, life, and legacy including Michael Richards: Are You Down? (MOCA North Miami, 2021; North Carolina Museum of Art, 2023; Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2023–24) and Michael Richards: Winged (LMCC, NY, 2016; Stanford University, CA, 2019). At Stanford, they also co-organized the academic symposium “Flight, Diaspora, Identity, and Afterlife: A Symposium on the Art of Michael Richards.”

Esther Callahan is an independent curator, arts organizer, and cultural strategist with over 20 years in the arts where her work actively challenges systems shaped by structural oppression. As the founder of The Blk Collectors and Art Director for Soul of the Southside, she creates dynamic platforms that connect artists, collectors, and communities through culturally responsive programming and immersive art experiences. Her collaborative approach has led to partnerships across museums, public art initiatives, and social justice organizations, and she has been a featured speaker at institutions including the University of Minnesota, Walker Art Center, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minnesota Museum of American Art, etc. Committed to expanding access and visibility, her curatorial work, including projects like Stand Up Prints at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, uplifts emerging artists and challenges traditional narratives of belonging in the arts.

Lissa Jones-Lofgren is an executive leader, organizational behaviorist, and leadership coach serving as Executive Director of The Shannon Leadership Institute and Executive Director of The Archie and Phebe Mae Givens Foundation for African American Literature. She is known for helping leaders and organizations navigate complexity, strengthen culture, and align mission with practice. She is also the host of Black Market Reads, a podcast amplifying the voices of Black authors and the enduring power of African American literature. Across every space she enters, Lissa brings clarity, courage, and a deep commitment to leadership that transforms both people and institutions.

Mudluk Pottery is a scrappy, grassroots ceramics sanctuary dedicated to creativity, community, and ease. Founded in Minneapolis by Sayge Carroll, Katrina Knutson, and Keegan Xavi, Black, queer, woman owned. Mudluk is a safe, welcoming space where artists of all backgrounds can explore, create, and grow. We pride ourselves on providing a clean, safe, and inspiring environment for learning and creativity.

Also in attendance will be Dawn Dale, Michael Richards’s cousin, the caretaker and steward of his art.