NEW YORK, NY.- The
American Federation of Arts (AFA), the national leader in traveling exhibitions since its founding in 1909, honored contemporary artist Firelei Bez at the annual Spring Luncheon event on May 20 in New York City. Each year the AFA Spring Luncheon presents a renowned figure in the arts and cultural community in a lively conversation about their work and impact on the art world. Bez was selected as this year’s featured speaker, and was joined in conversation with Connie Butler, MoMA PS1’s Agnes Gund Director.
The highly anticipated annual event brought together more than 240 guests – including artists, philanthropists, collectors, museum directors, art media, and prominent arts professionals.
Support of the annual Spring Luncheon ensures that audiences of all backgrounds can experience the transformative power of art. Proceeds go towards supporting the AFA’s development of touring exhibitions that reach millions of museumgoers, and advancing public programs – all part of the AFA’s mission to make the arts more accessible.
“At the American Federation of Arts, we are committed to creating meaningful ways for audiences to engage with art,” says Pauline Forlenza, the AFA’s Director and CEO. “The 2026 Spring Luncheon reflected that spirit, bringing Firelei Bez and Connie Butler into a dynamic conversation that explored how art reshapes our understanding of history, identity, and the world around us.”
This year’s event is presented with generous support from Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management. Past speakers at the Spring Luncheon include Jeffrey Gibson, Tschabalala Self, Sanford Biggers, Marilyn Minter, Jeff Koons, Anne Pasternak and Martha Stewart.
Firelei Bez and Connie Butler
“I am honored to have been selected by the American Federation of Arts to take part in this conversation event with Connie Butler, MoMA PS1's Director,” says the artist Firelei Bez. “Many thanks to the AFA for centering art, artists and connection in the way that they do.”
During their conversation, Bez and Butler reflected on pivotal moments in the celebrated artist’s career, and explored Baez’s creative process. Their timely dialogue focused on how her work is rooted in questioning inherited histories, how they are constructed and reimagined.
Anne McCollum, Elizabeth Belfer, Valeria Napoleone, and Jill Deupi
The discussion emphasized the importance of holding space for complexity, multiplicity, and the stories that shape how we understand ourselves and one another. Firelei Bez’s work is featured in major national and international exhibitions. She is a Dominican-born, New York-based contemporary artist known for her intricate paintings, works on paper, and large-scale sculptures. Bez is known for drawing upon African diasporic histories, Caribbean folklore and colonial legacies, reimagining them to explore new possibilities for the future.
Eric Shiner and Tyler Rollins
For more than a century, the AFA has brought world-class exhibitions to communities everywhere, ensuring that art is not only something people travel to see ‒ art travels to the people. The AFA’s touring exhibitions have been viewed by millions of people in museums in every U.S. state, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Katharine Wright (AFA Curator), Pauline Forlenza (AFA Director and CEO), Martina Tanga (AFA Director of Exhibitions & Curatorial Initiatives), and Anke Van Wagenberg (AFA Curator & Head of International Collaborations)
About Firelei Bez
Firelei Bez draws upon African diasporic histories, reimagining them to explore new possibilities for the future. Bez received an MFA from Hunter College, a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Since 2024, Bez has been the subject of her first major U.S. survey, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Des Moines Art Center, before traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where it remains on view through May 2026.
Her work has been featured in major international exhibitions, including The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), curated by Cecilia Alemani, and the inaugural installation of the ICA Watershed in Boston (2021). Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebk; Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art), Rotterdam; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; and Prez Art Museum Miami.
Bez has participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai.
She is the recipient of several major awards, including the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2020), the Artes Mundi Prize (2021), the Philip Guston Rome Prize (2021), and the Cooper Union President’s Citation (2022).
Her work is held in prominent public and private collections worldwide, including the Baltimore Museum of Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo; Prez Art Museum Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
About Connie Butler
Connie Butler is the Agnes Gund Director of MoMA PS1 in New York where she organized Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon (2024) and was part of the curatorial team for Greater New York (2026).
Prior to her arrival in 2023, she was Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where she organized numerous exhibitions including “Made in LA” (2014); “Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth” (2015); “Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space” (2017); “Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence” (2019); and “Witch Hunt” (2021). She also co-organized with MoMA, “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions” which opened at the Hammer in October 2018.
From 2006-2013 she was the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York where she co-curated the first major Lygia Clark retrospective in the United States (2014) and “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century” (2010). Butler has also published widely on feminist art and curatorial practice, and organized the groundbreaking survey “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles where she was curator from 1996-2006. In 2020 Butler received the Bard College Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence.
The AFA would like to thank the 2026 Co-Chairs:
Elizabeth Belfer, Jill Deupi, Elizabeth Madigan Jost, Martha MacMillian, Anne E. McCollum, Valeria Napoleone, and Alice Walton
2026 Host Committee:
Derrick Adams, Sarah Arison, Pamela Averick, Laura Bardier, Renee Belfer, Jonathan P. Binstock, The Phillips Collection, Janis Gardner Cecil, Diana Elghanayan, Leslie & Tom L. Freudenheim, Miller Gaffney Art Advisory, Lee White Galvis, Judith A. Garson, Goppion, Ellen Grimes, Karla Harwich, Anthony Hirschel, Akiko Kamata, Elaine Kones, Barbara & Richard S. Lane, Mary Lapides, Bonnie Lautenberg, Christian Levett, NancyJane & Jeffrey M. Loewy, Claire Marmion, Peg Mastrianni, Clare E. McKeon, Bridget Moore, DC Moore Gallery, Tina Estes Novogratz, Howardena Pindell, Judith Pineiro, Stephen Reily, Tyler Rollins, Alexandra Lind Rose, Kimerly Rorschach, Capera Ryan, Betsy Pinover Schiff, Frances Schulman, Angelica Semmelbauer, Steve Shane, Barbara Karp Shuster, Barbara Madsen Smith. Tina & James Snyder, Belinda Tate, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Serena Trizzino, Monique Schoen Warshaw, Allison Whiting, Deborah Willis, and Kennedy Yanko
The AFA is honored to collaborate with a network of more than 100 distinguished museum partners, including:
In the Northeast: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum (NYC).
In the South: High Museum of Art (Atlanta), Lowe Art Museum at University of Miami, Dallas Museum of Art, Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston), and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond). In the Midwest: Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City), and Wichita Art Museum.
In the West: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and Seattle Art Museum. International museum partners include: Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (U.K.), Muse du Louvre (Paris), The British Museum (London), and Vancouver Art Gallery (Canada).
About the American Federation of Arts
The
American Federation of Arts (AFA) is the leader in traveling exhibitions in the U.S. and worldwide. One of the first to successfully tour art exhibitions on a national and international level, the organization unites American art institutions, collectors, artists, and museums.
The AFA has toured more than 3,500 exhibitions that have been viewed by millions of people in museums in every U.S. state, and in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
A nonprofit organization founded in 1909, AFA is dedicated to enriching the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts through organizing and touring art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishing exhibition catalogues featuring important scholarly research, and developing educational programs.
