Join Reading Red – an Artpace book club – and explore literature that has inspired artists and exhibitions.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler was selected by International Artist-in-Residence guest curator Natalie Bell. The 1993 apocalypse science fiction novel provides commentary on climate change and social inequality as it follows Lauren Olamina in her quest for freedom.

Natalie Bell is Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, where she recently organized solo exhibitions of Leslie Thornton and Sreshta Rit Premnath(both 2021). She was previously Associate Curator at the New Museum, New York, where she organized over a dozen solo exhibitions, among them: Lubaina Himid (2019), Marguerite Humeau (2018), Kahlil Joseph (2017), Hiwa K (2018), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2017), and Anri Sala (2016). Bell also co-curated several major group exhibitions, including “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” (2017), “The Keeper” (2016), and “Here and Elsewhere” (2014), as well as “The Same River Twice” (2019) and “The Warmth of OtherSuns” (2019). She has edited or coedited more than a dozen exhibition publications and published widely. Prior to her work at the New Museum, Bell was assistant curator for “The Encyclopedic Palace,” the International Exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). To learn more about Natalie Bell, please visit our website.

The book club meeting will be held virtually on Zoom, Saturday, October 30, at 2pm. Reading Red Book Club is free and open to the public. Registration is required.