Kimberly Drew

If anyone understands how to communicate with vast swaths of people about art in a way that’s both memorable and effective, it’s Kimberly Drew, who commanded widespread attention with her Black Contemporary Art Tumblr blog and has a résumé that includes stints at The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she worked for a time as the institution’s social media manager. In her 2020 YA nonfiction bestseller, This Is What I Know About Art, Drew shows her readers how a desire for collective change and a love for art and aesthetics are intrinsically linked.

The urgently productive author is showing no signs of slowing down.

Superstars like Janelle Monáe are avowed fans of her work, and she’s got another project in the pipeline: the forthcoming book Black Futures, “an archive of collective memory and exuberant testimony” co-written with the New York Times Magazine staff writer and “Still Processing” podcast host Jenna Wortham. Set to debut on December 1, 2020, Black Futures is a multimedia collection of work by Black artists that includes everything from academic dialogues to memes and which promises to illuminate new modes of possibility for readers searching for radical insight in a world gone mad.