MELAINE FERDINAND-KING DESIGNING THE FUTURE OF CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS.
M elaine Ferdinand-King’ s work does not lend itself to easy description. A cultural researcher, writer and curator who holds a Ph. D. in Africana Studies from Brown University, she’ s most recently found herself leaning into the identity of“ cultural strategist.”
“ I was always really interested in questions of community engagement models, power, disenfranchisement and allocation of resources,” she says.
Originally from New Jersey, she studied at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, before completing her doctoral studies at Brown last year. Since then, she’ s immersed herself in curating and interpreting Rhode Island’ s cultural history, particularly as it relates to Black aesthetics, social change theory and policy. Last fall, she was brought on as the inaugural curator at the African American Museum of Rhode Island, where she oversaw strategic planning of the first gallery space and curation of the inaugural exhibit at the museum’ s first physical space on Broad Street this past April.“ Welcome to the Neighborhood: Mapping Black Providence in Art and Archives( 1940s – 1970s)” focused on the vitality of Black businesses, social and political organizations as well as policies of urban renewal and displacement in Fox Point, Lippitt Hill, University Heights and the South Side, as told through archival data and community photographs. Her current title at the museum is associate director of curatorial affairs and development.
“ It’ s a true honor,” she says.“ For people who are from here and born here to entrust me with their family histories and the stories of their lives is something I could have never foreseen and I hold very close to my chest.”
Outside the museum, she has worked with Cade Tompkins Projects to exhibit the work of Black artists, including Rhode Island-based artist Bob Dilworth and Donnamaria Bruton, the first Black woman and Black person to chair the painting department and the first Black person to receive tenure at the Rhode Island School of Design. Earlier this year, Ferdinand-King curated the first exhibit of Bruton’ s neverbefore-seen works on paper, titled“ Twenty Recipes for Patience.”
“ I’ ve been speaking out more about the
role of Black artists in the Rhode Island ecosystem and working with artists to recover their legacies to ensure they have places to be remembered,” she says.
She is the founder of Mprovise, a cultural studio and public research lab that opens in residency at Slate Studio in Providence in October. The residency hosts resources and programming on the topics of culture and media as well as humanities and AI policy and seeks to create a research hub accessible to New Englanders outside major academic institutions.
She is also a poet whose work has been recognized with the Michael S. Harper Memorial Prize for jazz poetry. Her cultural work often brings her into close collaboration with other local organizations— including The Womxn Project, Gallery Night Providence, Boston Art Review and the Bristol Historical & Preservation Society— and earlier this year she worked with the Stillhouse Cove Remembrance Project to help establish a monument to honor enslaved Africans and their descendants at Cranston’ s Stillhouse Cove.
“ So often when I talk to folks who are from here, they feel like they have to leave Rhode Island to make a name for themselves,” she says.“ Part of my work in staying here is to cultivate a different kind of infrastructure so that folks who are from here as well as transplants like myself see Rhode Island as a place they can stay and call home.
“ I mean business,” she adds.“ I’ m here to work and I’ m here to serve and I’ m here to learn. I want people to walk with me in this journey and in highlighting the many talents and gifts that the state has.”— L. C. 🆁
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I OCTOBER 2026 87