NXTHVN Takes NXT Steps

Dr. Kalia Brooks, who has been named NXTHVN's director of programs and exhibitions. John Dennis/NXTHVN Photo. 

A Black History Month open mic night hosted by New Haven public high school students. An exhibition from a slate of emerging curators, and another from seven artists who have called Dixwell their creative home for a year. A new cohort of fellows who will live and work in New Haven, partnering with some of the city’s young artists along the way.

All of those are on tap this winter, as NXTHVN moves into 2022 with three new staff members at the helm. As the arts incubator enters its fifth year and fourth fellowship cohort at 169 Henry St., it has welcomed Director of Programs and Exhibitions Kalia Brooks, Programs Manager Victoria McCraven, and Student Program Manager Jay Kemp. It marks a period of growth for the 45,000 square foot space, which was founded in 2017 by artist Titus Kaphar and investor Jason Price.

All three are working to grow NXTHVN’s fellowship program, high school apprenticeship, rotating schedule of exhibitions, and number of community events. Together, they bring a skill set that includes community organizing, youth development, and curatorial and art historical practice. 

"I'm excited to model what investment in a community and in a neighborhood looks like through the arts, and to continue—in addition to bringing people into the building—to reverberate and resonate outside of our structure and our architecture,” Brooks said on a recent episode of “Arts Respond” on WNHH Community Radio. “I think that is where we're gonna see tremendous impact."

Student Program Manager Jay Kemp. John Dennis/NXTHVN Photo. 

Each brings a different perspective to the space, a glass and brick facade that rises off of Henry Street just a block from James Hillhouse High School. Before her tenure at NXTHVN, Brooks worked at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and then as the first Mellon project director in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University. At the time, the position was a completely new undertaking that followed the department’s creation in December 2018.

During her time there, Brooks spearheaded a series of conversations with and among Black artists, including the composer and pianist Jason Moran, writer ​​Ayana Mathis, and Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat. She is also no stranger to NXTHVN, with which she has worked on a consulting basis since 2018. In the first year of the pandemic, she was the curatorial advisor on Material Intimacies, curated by fellows Michelle Phương Ting and Claire Kim in October 2020. Last fall, she and McCraven curated ​​​​Christian Curiel: Between Reveries in the space’s main gallery.    

Now, she said, she’s ready to work closely with the artists and curators in NXTHVN’s fellowship and high school apprenticeship programs and members of the Dixwell neighborhood and wider New Haven community. The second has been a point of contention for the organization, which in 2018 received a warm welcome from some in the community, and was criticized by others as a gentrifying force (a concern that Kaphar has addressed many times over, from his choice to invest in Dixwell to the site as an example of adaptive reuse).

“For me as a curator and art historian, I have always wanted to work as closely with artists as possible,” Brooks said. “And so my work at NXTHVN allows me to do that. Making the transition from Columbia to NXTHVN also allowed me to think about the ways in which I can expand the conversation.”

Working closely with her, both McCraven and Kemp said they look forward to getting the word out about NXTHVN—and getting members of the public through its doors—as they continue to work with the fellows and high school apprentices who fill its halls, studios and gallery spaces. Each year, NXTHVN accepts seven artists and two emerging curators into its year-long fellowship program, a work-live residency that brings them into New Haven. In 2020, the spectre of Covid-19 hung over fellows’ first exhibition in the space, which closed days after an opening reception for Countermythologies on March 7.   

A still from Roots To Benevolence, which ran at NXTHVN last summer. Chris Gardner Photo.

It also brings on nine high school student apprentices, each of whom works one-on-one with a fellow on a year-long project. Last year, the summer exhibition Roots To Benevolence grew out of that collaboration. Later this month, apprentices will host a virtual Black History Month open mic night, a first for the organization. Kemp, who worked previously at The Future Project, has been working closely with students as they pivot from virtual apprenticeships back to in-person gathering this year. He pointed to the importance of play and experimentation in their work.

"That gets lost a lot in schools, sometimes even in other after-school programs,” he said. “To really play in their imagination, and then being at a place like NXTHVN, which was created out of imagination."

He added that being in person has allowed him to check in honestly with students, all of whom have now lived with pandemic-era education for almost two full years. He’s acutely aware of the level of anxiety that students are facing, he said. The program is meant to be the antidote.

”It's to the point, not to get too deep here, where it's not just 'I suffer from anxiety,' but 'I am anxiety,’” Kemp said. “​​That's what I hear from a lot of young people. They almost take depression and anxiety on as their identity. So a lot of what we do is directing them towards their own power."

Victoria McCraven has been appointed to programs manager. John Dennis/NXTHVN Photo. 

In March, 2021-2022 curatorial fellows Marissa Del Toro and Jamillah Hinson will open Let Them Roam Freely at the Henry Street gallery. Then in early June, studio fellows Layo Bright, John Guzman, Alyssa Klauer, Africanus Okokon, Patrick Quarm, Daniel Ramos and Warith Taha will all be part of a show in New York City, at a gallery that NXTHVN has not yet shared the name of. The organization is still accepting applications for its 2022-2023 fellowship; people can apply here.

McCraven, an early-career art historian, curator and Fulbright alum who grew up in the area, said that she’s especially eager to show young people that “this is really a viable path,” and NXTHVN is for them, too. After years attending the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and later working for Kaphar and the Amistad Center for Art & Culture in Hartford, it feels like a full-circle moment. 

"Growing up in the area, I didn't see something like NXTHVN," she said. "And if I had, I think I would have come to the arts even earlier.”

NXTHVN’s fellowship program is currently accepting applications for its 2022-2023 cohort. People can apply here through Feb 21. There is no formal education requirement. "Arts Respond" is a collaboration between WNHH Community Radio and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Listen to the NXTHVN episode above.