Melaine Ferdinand-King is a cultural strategist, poet, and writer focused on historical and community narratives, and the inaugural curator of the African American Museum of Rhode Island. She is a winner of the 2026 Rabkin Prize. You can read more about Melaine here. 

We invited Melaine to have a conversation about her work and ideas. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of Melaine in her home by Kevin J Miyazaki. 

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

• African American Museum of Rhode Island

• Navigating by Starlight/PhDs of Practice speech by Melaine Ferdinand-King (Brown University, May 2025)

• Reimaging Cultural Frameworks: Afrosurrealism in Practice speech by Melaine Ferdinand-King (Brown University, April 2025)

• Sojourner Truth

• Activist and writer Angela Davis

• Ida B. Wells

• Scholar Brian Meeks

• Scholar Geri M. Augusto

• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman (W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2020) 

• 1967 Interview between Aimé Césaire and René Depestre originally published in Poesias by Aimé Césaire (Casa de Las Emericas, 1969)

• Manifestoes of Surrealism by André Breton, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen Lane (Ann Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press, 1969)

• Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley (Penguin Random House, 2003)

• Scholar Barrymore Bogues

• Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940 curated by María Elena Ortiz (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2024)

• Artist Kara Walker

• Artist Wifredo Lam

• 21st Century Ph.D. at Brown University

• Antidisciplinary term popularized by Joi Ito (MIT Media Lab, 2014)

• Jazz Improvisers Score High on Creativity by Kimber Price (Science News, Jan. 2, 2018)

• States of Consciousness: The Layered Life of Donnamaria Bruton by Melaine Ferdinand-King (Boston Art Review, Feb. 3, 2026)

• Cade Tompkins Projects

• Artist Edward Loper Jr.

• Artist Shahzia Sikander

• Delaware Art Museum

• Black Biennial 2022 co-founded by Melaine Ferdinand-King

• Rhode Island School of Design

• Artist Bob Dilworth

• Scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin

• Musician Boots Riley on Instagram

• Actress/writer Michaela Coel

• Poet Hanif Abdurraqib

• Poet Nikki Giovanni

• Poet Amiri Baraka

• Poet Lucille Clifton

• Poet Jayne Cortez

• Scholar Michele Faith Wallace

• Poet Audre Lorde

• Author Toni Cade Bambara

• Art critic Jerry Saltz on Instagram

• Poet Larry Neal

• Black Arts Movement

• Singer Donny Hathaway

• Poet/musician Aja Monet

• Singer Betty Carter

• Singer/musician Alice Coltrane

• Musician John Coltrane

• Singer/musician Nina Simone

• Musician Dizzy Gillespie

• Art on My Mind: Visual Politicsby bell hooks (The New Press, 1995) 

• Art Papers

• Light A Fire Readings at Art Papers Art Writing and Publishing Symposium (2025)

• Writer/critic Re’al Christian

• Brooklyn Museum

• Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art exhibit (Brooklyn Museum, October 2024)

• Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses exhibit (Brooklyn Museum, 2026)

• Artist Iris van Herpen and her Beyoncé design

• Boston Art Review

• Melaine Ferdinand-King’s work for the Boston Art Review

• Mean-Making in the Here and Now: Reflections of an Emerging Curatorby Melaine Ferdinand-King (Providence College Galleries, Dec. 19, 2022)

• Dark Designs and Visual Culture by Michele Wallace (Duke University Press, 2004)

• Designer Zoë Pulley

This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin  Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The interview was conducted by Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist and the executive director of the Rabkin Foundation. The portraits were made by artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki. The production team includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer; Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copy editing by Danielle Yovino and Nan Williams.

Music is HaHaHa by Ariel Shalom, Present in the Past by Flint, and Old Bounce by Jaxon Wild. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.