The University of Colorado Boulder welcomes Robin North to the Department of Art & Art History as Assistant Professor of Photography and History of Photography. North will teach in the Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practice area of study, as well as courses in the history of photography, bringing his research-based practice in photography, archives, Black geographies, and preservation activism into the classroom.

The Out(sider) Preservation Initiative (OPI), founded by Dr. Andrea Roberts and supported by the Mellon Foundation announces the recipients of its second grant cycle. Housed within the Center for Cultural Landscapes, OPI advances research, education, and grantmaking that support descendant-centered approaches to Black placemaking and preservation. Selected from a highly competitive pool of 100 applications, this year’s eight grantees represent community-rooted projects led by descendants, artists, educators, and local leaders preserving and activating Black historic settlements in Texas, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and California.

Members of this year’s grantee cohort were selected for their deep connections to place, their capacity to facilitate descendant return and revitalization, and their commitment to preservation as a living practice. From family land and historic Black settlements to churches, gathering spaces, and migration routes, the projects reflect the many ways communities continue to care for places that carry history, identity, and belonging. Each initiative is grounded in local knowledge and shaped by the people most closely connected to the stories being shared.

Robin North was selected for the 2025 PhotoLucida Critical Mass Top 50, an international photography competition recognizing artists whose work stands out through its strength, vision, and contribution to contemporary photographic practice. Critical Mass brings selected portfolios before an international group of curators, gallerists, publishers, editors, educators, artists, and photography professionals. North was selected for his series Decolonized Aesthetics, bringing his ongoing work in photography, archives, Black geographies, and preservation activism to a broader international audience and placing the work within a network of institutions and professionals shaping contemporary photography.

Robin North was selected for the 2025 PhotoLucida Critical Mass Top 50, an international photography competition recognizing artists whose work stands out through its strength, vision, and contribution to contemporary photographic practice. Critical Mass brings selected portfolios before an international group of curators, gallerists, publishers, editors, educators, artists, and photography professionals. North was selected for his series Decolonized Aesthetics, bringing his ongoing work in photography, archives, Black geographies, and preservation activism to a broader international audience and placing the work within a network of institutions and professionals shaping contemporary photography.

Robin North was selected for the 2025 PhotoLucida Critical Mass Top 50, an international photography competition recognizing artists whose work stands out through its strength, vision, and contribution to contemporary photographic practice. Critical Mass brings selected portfolios before an international group of curators, gallerists, publishers, editors, educators, artists, and photography professionals. North was selected for his series Decolonized Aesthetics, bringing his ongoing work in photography, archives, Black geographies, and preservation activism to a broader international audience and placing the work within a network of institutions and professionals shaping contemporary photography.

Robin North was selected as a 2025 Working Assumptions Project Grant recipient for The Garcitas Community: Deep Roots, Buried Histories, a photographic and archival project centered on the Garcitas Freedom Community in Texas. The project brings together contemporary photography, family archives, descendant knowledge, and preservation work to document the community’s history and continued relationship to land, memory, and place.

Five years after the murder of George Floyd, H-Town Hurting returns Robin North’s photographs of Houston’s 2020 protests to the city where they were made. The exhibition reflects on civic grieving, collective action, memory, and what remains after the crowds disperse.

Northwest Missouri State University will host an artist’s exploration of the ways rural, Black Southern families use visual art as a means of resistance and narrative reclamation during the spring semester’s first exhibit in the Olive Deluce Art Gallery.

Titled “An Archive of Care: Reframing Our Understanding of Family, Place, and Identity,” the exhibit features the work of Robin North, an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator who grew up along the Gulf Coast in the deep south of Texas.

“We feel very privileged to introduce the work of Robin North to our community through his gripping exhibition in the DeLuce Gallery,” Dr. Karen Britt, a Northwest associate professor of art, said. “The work in his exhibition explores the complicated history of our country’s past in original and deeply moving ways. As historical documents, photographs have an immediacy that draws us in, when I view the work in the exhibition I personally have the sense that North’s images are passing through me rather than my passing through the images. It is a penetrating and meaningful experience that we are thrilled to offer our students and the community.” 

Robin North’s exhibition An Archive of Care at Northwest Missouri State University’s DeLuce Gallery was featured by the St. Joseph News-Press, broadcast on CBS 30 KCJO, and syndicated nationally by Yahoo Life. The coverage highlights North’s photographic and archival practice, which examines family, place, memory, and the histories of Black communities.