Coffee & Collections: Collective Tapestry of DC’s Public Art History

Murals have long animated Washington, DC’s neighborhoods, serving not only as expressions of visual culture but also as enduring records of the city’s layered social and historical landscapes. Artist and curator Cory Lee Stowers—an award-winning subcultural anthropologist, muralist, and founder of ART B.L.O.C. DC, whose work bridges public art, archival practice, and community storytelling—will lead a conversation examining the role of murals and street art in shaping and reflecting the cultural fabric of Washington, DC. The conversation centers on the newly available digitized photographs from the museum’s past exhibition Whose Art Is It, Anyway? The Arts in Public Places (1990). Cory Lee Stowers is a Washington, DC–based curator, artist, author, and cultural worker whose practice operates at the intersection of subcultural anthropology, public art, and visual communication. With more than two decades of experience in graffiti culture, muralism, and urban creative systems, his work investigates questions of identity, authorship, and memory as they manifest within the built environment.