Structure — The Arts Writing Incubator

The Arts Writing Incubator is the heart of The Black Embodiments Studio.

Twice a year, a small cohort of people join the Arts Writing Incubator to read contemporary writing about black artists, see work together, and gain support in developing their own arts writing. Participants come from all walks of life and with different relationships to writing and to the art world.

Our sessions are virtual and feature black artists, writers, and curators who help develop participants’ knowledge and skillsets. At the end of each year, participants’ writing is edited into the BES journal, A Year in Black Art.

Learn more about our application details.

  • Incubator participants dedicate themselves to seeing as much contemporary Black art as possible. In Seattle, BES’ home base, people regularly visit the Seattle Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Martyr Sauce, SOIL, Method, On the Boards, Langston Hughes Performing Art Center, Northwest African American Museum, Photographic Center Northwest, and more.

  • BES steeps residents in diverse models of arts writing, including exhibition catalog essays, short-form reviews, wall text, in-depth artist profiles, and more. We read for form and content but also to clarify our own relationships to voice and tone, ultimately working to bridge the gaps between writing staged in the academy, in contemporary art, and in writing for the larger public sphere.

  • We invites artists, scholars, writers, and curators to be in intimate conversation with Incubator participants, and to engage in public programming with the larger BES community. Participants gain important access to artists, scholars, and curators whose work on contemporary Black embodiments models the innovation, accessibility, flexibility and criticality that participants strive for in their own writing.

  • The Arts Writing Incubator is dedicated to helping residents shepherd their own arts writing into publishable forms. Over the course of our time together, participants focus on an artist, exhibition, or single work to write about, and develop their own perspectives in short-form (600-1200 words) pieces meant to be published in the BES journal, A Year in Black Art, and elsewhere.

What We Do