Changing the Way We See: A Conversation with Writer, Curator, & Cultural Historian TK Smith

I first met TK Smith in February at the Hambidge Center, and I loved being in his presence so much, I don’t even know how to begin to describe him. I could tell you he’s an award-winning writer, curator, and cultural historian with expertise in modern and contemporary art. I could list his ten years of experience as an independent scholar, or his curatorial roles at Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum and the Barnes Foundation. I could mention that he won the 2024 Rabkin Prize for critical art writing—his writing has been published in exhibition catalogues, academic journals, and periodicals. He’s also written for Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, and ART PAPERS, where he’s a contributing editor. He’s currently completing a dissertation “Granite, Power, and Piss: The Shifting Position of a Confederate Symbol (related essay linked here).” Our first discussions were over our shared obsessions with Confederate monuments and the fact that both of us have roots in Mississippi. TK’s family is from Durant; I was born in Greenwood.

But that doesn’t get across what it’s like to have TK walk into a room, John Deere cap on, and smile in greeting.

Nor does it capture what it’s like to hear TK read his work. In fact, after hearing him read his December 2025 piece on the legacy of Minnie Evans, I realized I will never look at art—particularly art made by self-taught Black artists or individuals from disenfranchised groups—the same way ever again.

Currently, TK is in Portland, Oregon, preparing for Saturday’s opening of the Oregon Biennial, which he curated. The exhibition, The Price of the Ticket (a nod to James Baldwin), explores place, power, and promise in relationship to the land, our histories, and our nations. It takes place at Portland’s Oregon Contemporary and runs through July 5th.

TK and I spoke in mid-March at the Cupboard Cafe in Dillard, Georgia. This interview has been condensed for clarity; the link to the full audio of our conversation is below.

Where are you from? Waterloo, Iowa, though most recently Atlanta

What is your medium?

 At the root, I’m a writer. I write about culture and am a cultural historian. I’m also a curator. I work with artists and other historians, other culture workers, to put together exhibitions in museums, in experimental art spaces, sometimes in random places like elevators.

We put these shows together based around questions and ideas we have about life. As a cultural historian, I ask questions about our culture today through the lens of history. How did we get to this point? How did this become normal? How did this become marginal? How did this become strange? How did this become beautiful? How did this become sacred?

I try to answer those questions through a historical lens on our culture or intersecting cultures. And then being a writer, I write about all of these things. I write about art, I write about phenomena and our culture. I write about history.

They all intersect in my interests, which are the body, identity, nationalism, the built environment, and ephemerality.

How did you get into your work?

 I was a PBS kid.  And growing up in, in Waterloo, which is a small kind of industrial town. That’s where John Deere is. Hence my hat.  

There were resources, but (Waterloo) is a small Midwestern town, and so I would watch PBS and get exposed to things like the opera, ballet, graffiti. There would be all these different features on public access television that I just didn’t have access to physically, tangibly in my hometown.

 My mom was very supportive of me trying a little bit of everything. And she tried to make everything as accessible as possible to the point where we left Iowa by the time I was in high school because she wanted me to have more opportunities, so we moved to St. Louis..

 Reflecting back on it, I realized what I really liked was culture. I really liked being able to talk about everything and where all these things came from and where these stories come from, and how they turn into how one story can turn into a Disney film, a ballet, a play, a book…

 By the time I graduated from undergrad, I thought I’m gonna be a librarian. And I got a job at the academic library at my university working overnight. While I got my Master’s in American Studies, I was like, maybe I need to check out museums. The only internship I could find was in a contemporary art museum. And I’d never thought about art outside of history or outside of academia as its own world, and that just exposed me to so much potential.

Working on a show about urban sprawl combined all of my interests. We were working with artists. We were working with elders in the community, taking oral histories. We were working in the archives, we were doing all of the things, and people got it on different levels, different works of art. It impacted people different ways, and reached people way more than the, sometimes the barrier of a book can.  Some people just don’t learn that way.

But when you are able to illustrate it through a work of art, you reach so many more people. And the museum I worked in was free. It didn’t have a collection. It wasn’t beholden to a collection, so they could respond to the community in real time. That felt so much more effective in terms of exchanging knowledge. And that’s how I ended up a curator.

What did you make at Hambidge?

 I worked on an essay about an artist named Jorge Felix. He’s based in Chicago, and he made a series of work based on these paralleling photographs he took in his neighborhood, which is primarily Latinx and Puerto Rican, and his time in Nigeria. He’s Puerto Rican.

He has ancestral ties to Nigeria that he wasn’t raised knowing. After learning that he became extremely interested in trying to figure out when Puerto Ricans stopped being connected to their African heritage and why it was such a shameful thing. And where these myths of improving the race that permeate Caribbean culture come from. Improvement meaning whitening the race.

I’ve been working on that, starting with this kind of personal reverie about traveling to Bori, which is one of Nigeria’s points of no return…. there’s this, it’s not a myth, it’s a real thing that people believe, but there’s a well on that land bridge where a magician had magic’d the well, so everyone who drank from it would forget who they were or where they came from.

And they would have every person who was captured drink from this well before they were taken to the boats and put on the ships.  It’s the magic that people believed. And I’m making the argument that maybe it wasn’t so fantastical because… people forget where they came from and they forget where their culture comes from… is that the magic, or is that survival? What is it?

 So that’s the primary thing I’ve been working on as an independent writer. But I’ve also been working on these labels for the Oregon Biennial.

I was invited by the Oregon Contemporary and I said I would do it if I could make it about the semiquincentennial. And if I could put Todd McGrain in it— his sculpture of York, the damaged and repaired, and the bronze are both in the biennial in two different locations. (Read about the history surrounding Todd McGrain’s bust of York, which was intentionally damaged, here and here and here.)

York was  the enslaved man, the only Black person who traveled with Lewis and Clark. He was enslaved by William Clark. He inherited him from his father.  He was asked to go on the Corps of Discovery with his then owner, William Clark.

He was told that he would be freed at the end, and as they traveled across the western part of the continent, and he was invaluable. There are so many indigenous stories where they say they would send York first because they would see his dark skin and think he was like a God—they would think he was marvelous or beautiful or strange.

And because York was a gentle person, he would be their first point of contact before Lewis and Clark and the rest of the corps would come. He was also the one cutting thickets and hunting food and he was essential. And so by the time they got to the end of the Oregon trail, essentially they had done it.

He was the first black man to traverse from one end of the United States to the other. And when the discovery was over, he was not granted freedom. He was not paid—all of the members were made national heroes given a medal. They were paid in land and money.York didn’t receive any of that as an enslaved person, and then he was not freed by William Clark.

William Clark was like, “I didn’t say I would free you immediately I still need you.” And once the United States government expanded into Missouri and William Clark was moved to St. Louis to head the National Indian Affairs Office, he tried to force York to go with him and leave his wife. York refused to leave his wife. Clark ended up selling York to his cousin.

As far as we know, he remained enslaved for at least five more years after the Corps of Discovery. He died relatively unknown. And so now, especially in Oregon and in Louisville, they have been pushing the effort to reintroduce this essentially American hero back into the canon.

What inspires you?

 Artists. I think just being here with you and everyone, the conversations that we’re having, the validation I’m getting about my writing—it’s so helpful.

The second thing I would say is nature. It’s been so nice being out here. It’s spring—seasons are so important to how my body works. I can feel as everything is waking up, that I’m waking up.

You were here before me, but I got here right before the mosquitoes came out, right? And now this frost has probably killed all of them. Just being reminded that things are seasonal and things change and I can change and I’m in a period in my life where I’m trying to change things has been really inspiring.

And then I would just say sleep. Sleeping, being rested enough to dream is rare in my life because I work so much. I’ve had some really interesting dreams.

How do you get into flow?

 This is a great question because I used to have rituals that I’m now rescripting. (Hambidge fellow) Jada Patterson helped me, because she gave me (beeswax) candles.

Before I write, I like to shower, eat, whatever I need to do to feel good in my body. And then I make coffee through the process of grinding the beans slow, pouring the hot water. I light a beeswax candle and it’s specifically beeswax, because they burn hotter and longer. I buy the same size candle, so they burn for the same amount of time. I can keep time without having to constantly look at my phone. The ones I use are the big, thick tower ones.

I play music without words. “Sketches of Spain” was the first album I listened to here, thanks to your recommendation. That was super helpful.

Preparing the space to write, preparing my body to write. And then once I’m in that space, it’s like even if I stop writing and I go do something else, the ideas keep exactly and they keep little bits of inspiration come.

And honestly, this was the first time I’ve gotten to read as much in such a short time and I forgot how inspiring books are. Even some of the questions that I was asking the books helped me write a little more about, think a little more critically about, or think a little more emotionally about. Some of the things I was working on, I would be reading and then I would pop up and write on the wall like a note for myself.

I have a bunch of scrap notes posted up on the wall, or I would be listening to an album. I would pop up and more ideas would come. So it was like I was in conversation with these other writers or musicians or artists in the residency, and that has been really, it’s kept me in the mode.

Why do you love/ did you choose Hambidge? What was your favorite thing/ things to do at Hambidge?

 I was reached out to by the director, Jamie Badoud, to give a VIP tour for the last auction. In exchange I got a two week residency. And he was very determined because I told him all these times I could do it, that were in December when the residency doesn’t have residents, and he was like “No, you have to be there when there are artists there.”

I quit my job and this time came up. It was perfect. I’m glad I came and there were other people. I’m glad I got to build some community.

I have learned a lot from the other artists here, and I honestly had no idea what to expect. I was told by everyone “There’s no wifi, there’s no internet, there’s no phone service. Really, it’s just you out there. Eating vegetarian but it’s great.”

And it’s true. How do you describe all of this in a sentence or two? It is a great experience and if you love the outdoors, which I do, and if you love the mountains, which I do, and if you love spring water and a a wood-burning sauna, you’re gonna have a good time. My cabin is beautiful. I feel like Johnny Depp in Secret Window, sitting there, writing my things.

Where can people find you online?

 I have a website which I am not updating. I’ve released myself of the necessity to update for a year. TKSmith106.com.

I’m most active on Instagram, which is @TKSmith106. TKSmith106 is my everything— I try to use that in general to make me as accessible as possible.

How can people buy/ support your work?

​​ The Oregon Biennial opens April 4th and continues through July 5th. We have a big closing event on July 4th which will involve some performances and readings, some public readings, but there’s programming all throughout Portland, Oregon.

Just reading my writing means a lot to me. It’s actually what keeps me writing because sometimes you feel like you’re writing into a void. You put the words out there and you don’t know if they’re reaching anybody or people thinking or thinking critically about it or thinking along with you. And every time someone says, “I read that,” even if you hate it, you know it’s at least wow you invested enough to hate it. And that makes a world of difference.

‘Cause sometimes, and I try to remind myself of this too, we’re not necessarily writing for today. We’re writing for as long as our words are needed. If my words could impact someone five generations from now and inspire them in some way, or inspire them in what not to do, even then it’s worth the effort to write now.

Anything else people should know?

 The biscuits at this cafe (The Cupboard Cafe) are good. Also the smoked wings at Blue Hound BBQ.

Hambidge is a wonderful experience. I will definitely be recommending it to other artists. The structure, the freedom you get here is so nice. And the pace is slower, you slow down so much. Sometimes you just have to slow your heartbeat down. It’s just good for you.

And, just keep doing what y’all do, whoever you are and whatever you do.

What books would you recommend?

 I’ll start with the Georgia Review which is connected to this ongoing conversation we’ve been having about Beverly Buchanan, an artist (Buchanan was an internationally acclaimed Black artist who lived in Athens, Georgia from 1987 until 2010. We’d both been to see Beverly’s Athens, the acclaimed exhibit at the Athenaeum). A writer who I love is Bryn Ashley Evans. She was an editor at Burn Away. I’m such a fan. She’s such a beautiful, gentle writer, and she’s so consistent in her writing. She writes a beautiful essay about Beverly Buchanan (that spirit in spite of / now like it was) that’s in the Georgia Review.

And then there’s another writer in the Georgia Review. Her name is Patricia Ekpo. And she wrote an essay on Beverly Buchanan for the show in Athens called A Little Shortness of Breath, the Open Black Body as Southern Landscape. She (talks about how) Beverly Buchanan makes these vernacular home sculptures, usually out of the discarded pieces of architecture from Black homes and communities—she calls them skin. The body, the buildings are like bodies, and she describes the illnesses of the body as an illness or a fault or a ruin of architecture.

So there are some buildings that are damaged and she’ll say, “Ooh. Looks a little septic. The building might be constipated.” A building could be asthmatic. And so a little shortness of breath comes from a quote from Beverly Buchanan where she’s describing a structure, saying that it has shortness of breath, that it’s a malady that you can physically see on the surface of the structure itself.

And then, Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed. I’m reading it again. I got my own copy this time so I can write in it and mark it up. I think it will help me bring the conversation I’m having about the monument in St. Louis to the present in a more active way. I don’t want my dissertation to feel so steeped in the 20th century. I want people to realize how present the conversation is.

What three albums would you recommend?

“In the Blue Light” —Kelela

“Biophilia” —Bjork

“Sketches of Spain” —Miles Davis

Artist(s) you love:

 (The artis) Beverly Buchanan for sure. Ooh, let’s pick a writer. I’ve read Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim, the American Pimp. I’m gonna add him because he’s a person who turned his life around. He’s able to talk about trauma in a way that does not trivialize or judge people’s actions, drug addiction, incest—those kinds of things are real people’s experiences. And because he, to a certain extent experienced them and lived them himself, he’s able to talk about people in a way that is human that I really appreciate.

And then we’ll say, Miles Davis. Because “Sketches of Spain” got me in the mood to write.

What keeps you sane right now?

Other artists.

The Price of the Ticket, the exhibition curated by TK Smith, takes place at Portland’s Oregon Contemporary and runs through July 5th. Smith will be at the Oregon Contemporary the opening weekend.

Current Recommendations:

1. I’ve been listening to Yusuf Lateef while writing. Really like Eastern Sounds. Do you have any recs for music without words? Please comment!

2. Gardening! I just planted tomatoes, kale, collards, beets, and radishes.