Tyrone Maurice Adderley Lecture featuring Reneé C. Neblett
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Reception | 5pm, MassArt Design and Media Center
Lecture | 6-7:30pm, DMC Lecture Hall
The Fall 2025 Tyrone Maurice Adderley Lecture featuring Reneé C. Neblett, CEO & Creative Director of Kokrobitey Institute, will take place starting at 5pm with a reception in the DMC Atrium, located at 621 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115. Light refreshments will be provided.
Directly following the reception, the lecture “The Future of Traditional Knowledge Systems: An Artist’s Journey” will then take place in the DMC Lecture Hall at 6pm. Neblett has presented internationally on subjects such as fashion, sustainability, and Pan Africanism. During this lecture, she will discuss how her love of art, interest in the human form, and commitment to social justice have defined her personal journey, and the establishment of Kokrobitey Institute and its mission.
The Kokrobitey Institute is a dynamic inter-cultural learning space in Ghana dedicated to celebrating the intelligence of traditional Ghanaian culture as they relate to education, environmental sustainability, resourceful design, and social entrepreneurship.
Tyrone Maurice Adderley Lecture at Mass
Tyrone Maurice Adderley Lecture featuring Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, November 7, 2023.
In His Own Terms: The Art of Tyrone Maurice Adderley (1962-1993) exhibition honoring the late Tyrone Maurice Adderley at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
The Office of Justice, Equity, & Transformation, Academic Affairs, and Center for Art & Community Partnerships are guiding the Tyrone Maurice Adderley lectures into the next generation. We renew our focus to elevate a platform for artists, scholars, and thinkers identified from the African diaspora to help us live our values in pursuit of a just, compassionate, and equitable learning environment.
Content warning: reference to suicide, mental health resources below
Tyrone Maurice Adderley.
In response to a tragedy, Massachusetts College of Art and Design made a commitment to increasing its recognition of multiple viewpoints and the presentation of artists outside the mainstream. The suicide of Tyrone Maurice Adderley, a talented and popular painting student, provided a catalyst. In his memory, faculty organized a lecture series to bring artists from underrepresented groups to give an honorary lecture to share their work and wisdom.
In 1995 Lorraine O’Grady gave the inaugural Tyrone Maurice Adderley Lecture. Over the past two decades members of the MassArt community have been privileged to meet and learn from artists, writers, scholars, and activists each year. These lectures have been consistently excellent but, more importantly, they have transformed MassArt and the profound influences of speakers past still reverberate in the halls and curricula of the school.
Available to all MassArt students
Mental Health support available to all MassArt students. Call (617) 879-7760 and press 1 to reach the 24/7 Support Line.
Text line staffed 9:00am-9:00pm by trained peers ages 18 - 26
24/7 text line for students of color
Text or message on What's App
To underscore the importance of the annual Tyrone Maurice Adderley Lecture to the MassArt community, this year’s committee commissioned a logo for the series. Created by Alumni, designer Hannah Briggs, ’22, the logo utilizes a symbol frequently used in Tyrone’s paintings while the typeface symbolizes breaking barriers in service of new pathways.
