The Ninth Annual Woodruff Arts Center Educator Conference
Rejuvenate, Recenter, Reimagine
June 2 – 3, 2022
2022 Keynote Speakers
Dr Fahamu Pecou – Thursday, June 2, 2022
Dr. Fahamu Pecou received his BFA at the Atlanta College of Art in 1997 and a Ph.D. from Emory University in 2018. Dr. Pecou exhibits his art worldwide in addition to lectures and speaking engagements at colleges and universities. As an educator, Dr. Pecou has developed (ad)Vantage Point, a narrative-based arts curriculum focused on Black male youth. Dr. Pecou is also the founding Director of the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA). Pecou’s work is featured in noted private and public national and international collections including; Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and Culture, Societe Generale (Paris), Nasher Museum at Duke University, The High Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Seattle Art Museum, Paul R. Jones Collection, ROC Nation, Clark Atlanta University Art Collection and Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia. In 2020, Pecou was one of 6 artists selected for Emory University’s groundbreaking Arts & Social Justice Fellowship. Additionally, Pecou was the Georgia awardee for the 2020 South Arts Prize. In 2017 he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition “Miroirs de l’Homme” in Paris, France. A recipient of the 2016 Joan Mitchell Foundation “Painters and Sculptors” Award, his work also appears in several films and television shows including; HBO’s Between the World and Me, Blackish, and The Chi. Pecou’s work has also been featured on numerous publications including Atlanta Magazine, Hanif Abdurraqib’s poetry collection, A Fortune for Your Disaster and the award-winning collection of short stories by Rion Amilcar Scott, The World Doesn’t Require You.
Kenny Leon – Friday, June 3, 2022
Tony Award-winning Director and former Alliance Theatre Artistic Director Kenny Leon will serve as one of the conference’s keynote speakers, Friday, June 3. Honored with an Obie and NAACP Image Award, Leon is also an Emmy-nominated, Broadway and television director. Most recently, he directed Lifetime’s Emmy-nominated Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia. Other credits include the Tony Award–winning Broadway premiere of Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece, A Soldier’s Play; Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte/Shakespeare in the Park; A Raisin in the Sun starring Denzel Washington (Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Best Revival of a Play); and “The Wiz Live!” on NBC. Leon served as Artistic Director of the Alliance Theatre for 11 years before to co-founding True Colors Theatre Company. He is currently the Senior Resident Director at the Roundabout Theatre Company.