Diedra Harris-Kelley is Co-Director of the Romare Bearden Foundation, the non-profit organization perpetuating the legacy of one of our greatest American visual artists. She offers a unique perspective on Bearden’s work, being a formally trained painter and niece of the artist’s late wife, Nanette Rohan Bearden. 

For the last decade, she has been part of the team leading the foundation through a successful run of exhibitions, publications, educational, and celebratory programs around the life and art of Bearden. She is the researcher for the Foundation and liaison to the WPI, the publisher of the Romare Bearden Digital Catalogue Raisonné. 

Harris-Kelley earned a BA in Art from California State University, Long Beach, and an MFA from the University of Michigan. She currently teaches a seminar course at Barnard College, has taught studio art at New York University, Parsons School of Design Studio Program, and for alternative high school and elementary school programs. Diedra has also conducted professional development workshops and lectured on art. She was a member of the curatorial team ofJazz at Lincoln Center from 2009 to 2012, and is the author of “Revisiting Romare Bearden’s Art of Improvisation,” published in Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, published by Columbia University Press.