For Immediate Release
June 6, 2022
Contact Information
The Association of African American Museums
202-633-2869
communications@blackmuseums.org
The Association of African American Museums Announces Mr. Brent Leggs as Keynote Speaker for 44th Annual Conference
The Association of African American Museums (AAAM) is excited to announce that Mr. Brent Leggs has been confirmed as the association’s keynote speaker for the 44th Annual Conference. The three-day in-person event will be held August 10th through 12th and will feature a keynote conversation entitled, The Renewal of Black Museums and Cultural Institutions. Leggs will also be featured in the virtual three-day conference the following week.
Brent Leggs joins AAAM2022 as the Thursday, August 11, 2022 Keynote Speaker. Mr. Leggs will discuss how he implemented the largest preservation campaign in U.S. history on behalf of African American places (to include several AAAM member institutions).
He is the founding executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, and a Senior Vice President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Through the Action Fund, he leads a broad community of leaders and activists in honor of the clarion that preserving African American cultural sites is fundamental to understanding the American story. In June and November 2021, Mr. Leggs secured two $20 million gifts from philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett and the Lilly Endowment for the preservation of African American historic assets and Black churches nationwide. To date, his work has resulted in nearly $80 million raised, 200 preservation supported, and a $14 million endowment established to sustain the Action Fund’s future. Mr. Leggs is a Harvard University Loeb Fellow, author of Preserving African American Historic Places, the 2018 recipient of the Robert G. Stanton National Preservation Award, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and Senior Advisor to the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
Located in Washington, D.C., AAAM is a non-profit member organization established to support African and African American focused museums nationally and internationally and the professionals who protect, preserve and interpret African and African American art, history, and culture. Established as the single representative and principal voice of the African American museum movement, the Association seeks to strengthen and advocate for institutions and individuals’ interests committed to the preservation of African-derived cultures. AAAM’s services enhance those museums’ ability to serve the needs and interests of persons of African ancestry and those who wish to know more about the art, history, and culture of African-derived cultures.
For more information about the Association of African American Museums, visit www.blackmuseums.org