In 2023, I sent The Metropolitan Opera an unsolicited email. They wrote back.

Anthony Davis's X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X — a groundbreaking 1986 opera with a libretto by Thulani Davis — was coming to the Met for the first time, directed by a Black director, only the second in the institution's history. I saw an opening.

I proposed a comprehensive marketing campaign and public programming series designed to bring new audiences into the opera house. What followed was two months of work: a printed zine distributed by hand to over 5,000 New Yorkers — at times from the very corner in Harlem where Malcolm X once stood and delivered his message through printed literature. The zine's visual language eventually shaped the Met's broader promotional campaign across the city.

The programming brought The Met together with the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, National Sawdust, The Paris Review, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. We closed with an 18-hour durational performance in the Met's Grand Lobby — a complete reading of The Autobiography of Malcolm X — free and open to the public. I had the honor of taking a portrait of each of our readers.

I worked on the substance, production, and execution of each of these projects with The Met’s communication and education teams.