WASHINGTON, DC.- The Phillips Collection is exhibiting Question Bridge: Black Males, a documentary-style video art installation that aims to represent and redefine black male identity in America. Since its inception in 2008, the project has recorded more than 1,600 questions and responses from black males of all ages and backgrounds that illuminate diversity of thought, character, and identity in America’s black male population. The Phillips joins the more than 30 cultural institutions that have exhibited this compelling installation.

“The Phillips Collection is committed to collaboration, innovation, and engagement with our world,” says Phillips Director Dorothy Kosinski. “The Question Bridge project exemplifies this mission by providing a platform for connection and conversation. The Phillips is proud to exhibit this thought-provoking installation that encourages a national conversation on race at a critical moment in American history.”

To foster honest expression and healing dialogue, the Question Bridge project allows one participant to ask a question while looking directly into the camera, and later another participant answers the question in the same way. The question-and-answer approach allows speakers to feel comfortable as they express their feelings on subjects that divide, unite, and puzzle. Artists Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Kamal Sinclair, and Bayeté Ross Smith have recorded more than 160 men in nine American cities, documenting their exchange of ideas and then shaping that content into an engaging video installation.

Question Bridge at the Phillips is accompanied by “Join the Conversation,” an in-gallery participatory experience. Visitors will be invited to consider some of the universal questions posed by the project, such as “What is common to all of us?” “What is the greatest gift you have been given?” and “What do you think is the best way to influence people?” Participants will write and share their responses in the gallery.

Through Prism.K12, the Phillips’s education initiative that connects the 21st-century museum to K-12 education through arts integration, the Phillips will work with DC Public School teachers and students to incorporate the exhibition into classroom content and core subject areas. Question Bridge curriculum will be included on the Phillips’s Prism.K12 website—an interactive space for educators to access works of art and teaching resources and connect with a community of arts integration practitioners—throughout the exhibition. This information will be supplemented by the experiences of two DCPS teachers and their high school classes as they integrate Question Bridge into their curricula and share their strategies with the Prism.K12 community.

At thePhillips’s Evening for Educators on November 12, all participating teachers will experience a variety of Prism.K12 curricular activities focusing on Question Bridge—including a social media challenge and in-gallery conversations—and discover arts-integrated connections to the K-12 classroom and practical ways to integrate Question Bridge into their teaching.

Question Bridge: Black Males is on view at the Phillips through January 3, 2016.