Reverberations: Lineages in Design History

Curated by Brian Johnson and Silas Munro

Reverberations will transform the gallery into an expansive educational space, reimagining design history to feature Indigenous, Black, and People of Color (IBPOC) designers and cultural figures. With a dazzling assemblage of historical and contemporary works of art and design by over fifty artists, Reverberations questions the narrative of design tradition as a single dominant line. Reflecting on rich ancestries that reverberate across epochs, alphabets and graphic languages transmit contours of wisdom across cultures. Multidimensional maps reveal layers of experience and counter colonial flattening and erasures. Visual strategies deployed by Black designers are reinforced as motifs in present-day avant-garde data visualizations. And intricate Indigenous traditions of beadwork and textile art weave ancestral knowledge into the future.

Reverberations is curated by Brian Johnson and Silas Munro with the advice of curatorial advisors Randa Hadi, Lisa Maione, and Ramon Tejada. The exhibition is inspired by  BIPOC Design History, a series of courses facilitated by the design studio Polymode. Beginning online in 2021, these collaborative courses created a one-room schoolhouse informed by generations of design practitioners, an experiment in expanding access to learning while inspiring future generations. 

Contributors to the exhibition include: Akwesasne Notes, Munirah AlShami, Gail Anderson, BIPOC Design History with Edgar Casarin, Hone Bailey, MJ Balvanera, Alan Bell, Pedro Bell, Dina Benbrahim, Pilar Castillo, Melissa Cody, Shannon Doronio Chavez, Gráfica Latina (José Menéndez & Tatiana Gómez), Schessa Garbutt, Jeffrey Gibson, Tony Gonyea, Nathan P Jackson, Louise E Jefferson, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., Jon Key, Luba People, Jacob Lawrence, Yoon Soo Lee, Beatriz Lozano, Mbuti People, Saki Mafundikwa, Wael Morcos, Ziddi Msangi, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Ella Myers, Shiva Nallaperumal, Onaman Collective (Christi Belcourt & Isaac Murdoch), Monique Ortman, Lívia Perez, Jackson Polys, Shraddha Ramani & William Villalongo, Roberto Rodriguez, Jennifer Sapiel Neptune, Theresa Secord, Bahia Shehab, Sarah Sockbeson, Mary Sully, Ramon Tejada & Carlos Avila, Pedro “Monky” Tolomeo Rojas Meza, Madeline Tomer Shay, Anna Tsouhlarakis, Dori Tunstall, Kelly Walters, Ben Warner, Lauren Williams, Alisha B Wormsley, Vocal Type, Tadanori Yokoo, and Vanessa Zúñiga Tinizaray.

Image courtesy of Polymode.

About the Curators

Brian Johnson

Brian Johnson, a member of the Monacan Indian Nation, is an award-winning designer and curator. He is a partner of Polymode, where he focuses on amplifying marginalized and forgotten voices through poetic research, learning experiences, and impactful design. He has guest lectured and hosted workshops at the School of Visual Arts; the Walker Art Center; AIGA’s National Design Conference; his alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design; and is one of the founders of the online learning platform BIPOC Design History. As a curator, he is the author of Posters That Sing: Indigenous / Native American Printed and Designed Works, an exhibition scheduled to open September of 2026, at Poster House museum in New York. Deeply invested in the production of good design without the expense of sacrificing our humanity or environment, he extends these values to his recent clients: The New York Times Magazine, MIT Press, A24, Nike, Airbnb, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Dia Art Foundation, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Johnson is the recipient of the 2023-24 Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators for which he is focusing on Indigenous-made works to combat erasure and decolonize design. The three-part article series, “Designing a History of Indigenous Graphic Artists”, “How Can a Poster Sing?”, and “Can We Find Our Way to Indigenous Joy?”, appear on Hyperallergic. He is a contributor to the upcoming publication, Gatherings: New Directions in Indigenous Book History published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Silas Munro

Silas Munro is a designer, artist, writer, researcher, curator, surfer and descendant of the Banyole people of Eastern Uganda. He is the founder of the design studio Polymode based in Los Angeles and Raleigh that works with clients across cultural spheres. Commissions and collaborations include: The New York Times Magazine, MIT Press, Nike, Airbnb, the Brooklyn Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Dia Art Foundation, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Munro is the curator and author of Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest at Letterform Archive in 2022-2023. He was a contributor to W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America and co-authored the first BIPOC-centered design history course, Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design 19th-21st Century. His work was recently exhibited at the Raizes Gallery at Lesley University, the LA Design Festival, and the Scottsdale Museum of Art, and is included in the collections of Tufts University, Lesley University, and the Montalvo Arts Center. Upcoming exhibitions in 2025 include a solo show at The University of Hartford’s Joseloff Gallery, and in the group show Data Consciousness: Reframing Blackness in Contemporary Print at Print Center New York curated by Tiffany E. Barber. Munro is Founding Faculty, Chair Emeritus for the MFA Program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts.