Health + Inequity, moderated by Curatorial Advisory Council member Elissa Blount-Moorhead, will pair Chicago-based artist LaToya Ruby Frazier and Baltimore-based physician Dr. Lisa Cooper. The panel will investigate access to health care with a focus on class inequity and environmental racism.

Talking Shop, our 2015 Speaker Series, partners acclaimed artists and professionals from various disciplines to discuss the nexus of art, science, medicine, technology, politics, and more. Where are the intersections of these practices? How can society utilize these disciplines in collaboration as catalysts for creative thinking? Each evening will begin with short presentations by the invited participants which will set context for moderated group discussion.

Talking Shop is made possible with generous support from The Aaron and Lillie Straus Foundation. This series is free and open to the public and hosted at the Baltimore School for the Arts located at 712 Cathedral St. Each panel will begin promptly at 7pm, doors close at 6:45pm.

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LaToya Ruby Frazier (born 1982, Braddock, Pennsylvania) received her BFA in applied media arts from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania (2004) and her MFA in art photography from Syracuse University (2007). She also studied under the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (2010–2011) and was the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow for visual arts at the American Academy in Berlin (2013–2014).

Frazier works in photography, video and performance to build visual archives that address industrialism, rustbelt revitalization, environmental justice, healthcare inequity, family and communal history. In 2015 her first book The Notion of Family (Aperture 2014) received the International Center for Photography Infinity Award.

In 2014, Frazier accepted the assistant professor of photography position at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has previously held academic and curatorial positions at Yale University School of Art, Rutgers University, and Syracuse University. Frazier lectures prolifically at academic and cultural institutions such as International Center of Photography, NY; Columbia University School of the Arts, NY; Parsons, New School, NY; Pratt Institute, NY; Cooper Union, NY; Tisch School of Arts, New York University; School of Visual Arts, NY; Freie Universitat Berlin, Dahlem Humanities Center and Hamburger Bahnhof; and Tate Modern, London among others.

Frazier’s work is exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally, with notable solo exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Her work has also been featured in the following group shows: The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus (2009), New Museum, NY; Greater New York (2010), MoMA PS1, NY; Commercial Break, Garage Projects (2011), 54th Venice Biennale; Gertrude’s/LOT (2011), Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Empire State (2013), Palazzo delle Esposizinoi, Rome; and The Way Of The Shovel: Art as Archaeology (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago among many others.

Her work has been exhibited in the following biennials: the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial (2012), NY; Recycling Memory: Recapturing the Lost City (2014), 11th Nicaraguan Visual Arts Biennial, Managua; Mom, am, I barbarian? (2013),13th Istanbul Biennial; and Busan Biennale (2014), South Korea.

Frazier is the recipient of many awards, including a fellowship from John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2014), Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize of the Seattle Art Museum (2013), the Theo Westenberger Award of the Creative Capital Foundation (2012), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2011), and Art Matters (2010).

Her work can be found in public and private art collections such as Museum of Modern Art; Brooklyn Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; Centre National Des Arts Plastiques, France; JP Morgan Chase Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago; Nasher Museum at Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Zabludowicz Collection, London, and Pomeranz Collection, Vienna among others. [latoyarubyfrazier.com]

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Dr. Lisa A. Cooper is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is also a core faculty member of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research. She has joint appointments in the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The author of over 130 research articles and several book chapters, and the principal investigator of 14 research grants from the National Institutes of Health and several private foundations, she is an internationally recognized expert on the effectiveness of patient-centered interventions (e.g., physician communication skills and cultural competence training, patient shared decision-making and self-management skills training) for improving health outcomes and overcoming racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Dr. Cooper has received several awards for her work in health disparities, including election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Delta Omega Public Health Honorary Society, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2007, Dr. Cooper was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship "Genius" Grant. In 2011, she was named an inaugural Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, and in 2012, she was named to an endowed professorship, the James F. Fries Professorship in Medicine, at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Cooper has made important contributions to diversity initiatives in medicine. In 2006, she received the Herbert Nickens Award for exceptional contributions to cultural diversity in medicine from the Society of General Internal Medicine. In addition, she has helped Johns Hopkins prioritize its activities to promote a more diverse and inclusive environment, deliver equitable care to patients, and engage the community.

Dr. Cooper has served on the boards of several community organizations and institutions, including Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Maryland and the Liberia Renaissance Foundation and the Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C. She has received awards for community partnership and advocacy in Baltimore from the Mental Health Association of Maryland; Bethel AME Church; Associated Black Charities; the National Coalition of 100 Black Women; and Monumental Medical Society. In February 2010, she was listed as one of MSNBC.com The Grio's 100 History Makers in the Making. In 2011, she was appointed by Governor O'Malley to the Maryland Health Care Quality and Costs Council where a special workgroup on disparities madevrecommendations leading to the passage of the Maryland Health Improvement and Disparities Reduction Act of 2012. In 2013, she was honored with the Watkins-Saunders Award from the American Heart Association for excellence in clinical, medical, and community work focused on diminishing healthcare disparities in Maryland. Dr. Cooper has testified at U.S. Congressional hearings regarding health disparities, diversity in the healthcare workforce, cultural competency training of health professionals, and funding for biomedical research.

Dr. Cooper is also a devoted mentor to faculty, post-doctoral fellows, residents, public health, nursing, medical, and undergraduate students. She is the principal investigator of an NIH-funded research and training Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (The Hopkins Center to Eliminate Cardiovascular Disparities). The Center's goal is to lower the impact of cardiovascular health disparities on vulnerable populations in Baltimore by using principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR) to build strong ties among researchers, healthcare provider networks, community members, and policy-makers.