About the bell hooks Institute | bell hooks Institute

The bell hooks Institute celebrates, honors, and documents the life and work of acclaimed intellectual, feminist theorist, cultural critic, artist, and writer bell hooks. Located close to the Appalachian hills in Berea, Kentucky, visitors to the bell hooks Institute have the opportunity to explore and visually engage with the artifacts, images, and manuscripts talked about in bell hooks's work. For example, you can see the brown baby doll bell writes about in her memoir Bone Black, look at the Star of David quilt her grandmother gave her when she left for college, check out the international editions of hooks's books.

The YAA Gallery at the bell hooks Institute showcases artwork by: Emma Amos, Carrie Mae Weems, Lyle Ashton Harris, Alison Saar, Alicia Henry, Elizabeth Catlett, Radcliffe Bailey, Moneta Sleet, and Margo Humphrey.

The Institute will bring together academics with local community members to study, learn and engage in critical dialogue. The bell hooks Institute brings scholars and thinkers from in and outside Kentucky to engage with us, to teach us, and to share new ideas in a setting that is local and diverse.

bell hooks

The bell hooks Institute documents the life and work of acclaimed intellectual, feminist theorist, cultural critic, artist and writer bell hooks. The Institute strives to promote the cause of ending domination through understanding the ways systems of exploitation and oppression intersect through critical thinking, teaching, events, and conversation.

Mission

bell hooks Institute Mission Statement

YAA Gallery | bell hooks Institute

The YAA Gallery at the bell hooks Institute showcases works by Emma Amos, Carrie Mae Weems, Lyle Ashton Harris, Alison Saar, Alicia Henry, Elizabeth Catlett, Radcliffe Bailey, Moneta Sleet, and Margo Humphrey. Most of the work was in the personal collection of bell hooks with new pieces added. In creating the YAA Gallery, bell hooks chose to take the art from private to public space. In the initial essay of Art On My Mind: Visual Politics, bell hooks declares, "Art constitutes one of the rare locations where acts of transcendence can take place and have a wide-ranging transformative impact."

All of the work in this collection has been chosen because it speaks to my heart: it is beauty that interrogates and transforms. Sharing this work in Berea, Kentucky--in my home state--is part of giving back to the local environment that is my home place. Berea prides itself on being a place where "art is alive." Join us in celebrating a union of craft and fine art.

-- bell hooks

Emma Amos

bell and Emma

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Visit | bell hooks Institute

To schedule your visit to the bell hooks Institute, please email [email protected].

The bell hooks Institute

300 Center Street

Berea, KY 40403

[email protected]

859-985-2878

Laverne Cox and bell hooks at the bell hooks Institute

As a bell hooks reader, Laverne Cox enthusiastically supports the bell hooks Institute. Understanding that it aims to be a place where learning conversations happen--talking together as a way of knowing our world better. The Institute aims to provide a way to educate as the practice of freedom that does not take place in the usual academic setting.

-- bell hooks