Salamishah Tillet Named Emerson Collective Fellow for Work Exploring Art as Vehicle for Change in Newark

Pulitzer prize-winning professor Salamishah Tillet has joined the newest cohort of Emerson Collective Fellows, called Local Leaders. The Emerson Collective Fellowship believes that thriving communities start with strong local leadership and the fellowship aims to encourage people of exceptional talent to advance bold new projects in education, immigration, the environment, social justice, media, and health. 

Fellows are chosen based on an established track record of excellence and originality; a deep engagement in education, immigration, social justice, the environment, and health; and the potential to pursue vital new work with the support of a fellowship. Tillet is one of eleven fellows in the 2025 cohort, who come from varied fields and include a chef, landscape architects, a museum director and more. Each of them is taking on a hyperlocal project to help their community come together and solve hard problems.

As an Emerson Collective Fellow, Tillet will curate an exhibition and series of events featuring works by artists born, based in, or visiting Newark, from 1975 through the present, to explore how art can confront and counter a city’s challenges.

As a proud granddaughter and resident of Newark, and director of Express Newark, I’m looking forward to honoring the contributions of visual artists who came of age during the massive divestment in the city in the 70s and 80s, and those who continue to be inspired by the challenges and opportunities our city faces today.

Tillet has dedicated her career to exploring Black experiences and envisioning art as a vehicle for change—themes that run from her criticism at The New York Times, which was honored with a Pulitzer Prize in 2022, to her two books, In Search of the Color Purple and Sites of Slavery. She’s currently writing a book on icon Nina Simone. 

Tillet, a Henry Rutgers Professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing, is also the executive director of Express Newark, a center for art, design, and digital storytelling at Rutgers University-Newark.  A unique space with exhibits, studios, classes, and events, it supports artists of all ages who, like Tillet, drive toward justice. 

A proud resident of Newark, Tillet has co-led multiple public art initiatives in the city, including the “A Call to Peace” exhibition in Military Park and the “Will You Be My Monument?” mural in Four Corners Historic District. She sees Express Newark as honoring the city’s legacy of art and activism—a legacy that has gone unappreciated for too long. Her work as an Emerson Collective Fellow will continue this mission.

“Given Emerson Collective’s history of supporting innovative and deeply rooted community-based programs, I feel especially honored to represent the city among this new cohort of ‘local leaders,’" said Tillet.  "As a proud granddaughter and resident of Newark, and director of Express Newark, I’m looking forward to honoring the contributions of visual artists who came of age during the massive divestment in the city in the 70s and 80s, and those who continue to be inspired by the challenges and opportunities our city faces today.’’

While Newark is known for its towering cultural legacy in the early 20th century, more recent decades have not received an appropriate appraisal. During that time, the people of Newark experienced deindustrialization, suburban flight, the disproportionate effects of crime, and divestment, followed by a period of rediscovery, development, and fears of gentrification and displacement. In turn, creatives engaged with these realities through a movement named by local artists as “The Newark School.” Tillet will explore this significant body of work, reflecting the city’s inherent beauty and value and nuanced attitudes toward revitalization. Additionally, public art engagements and activations throughout the city will highlight how communities can embrace art to confront their most significant challenges—and articulate possibilities for change.

 “We are at a crisis point in our history when the values and the structures of self and community that make us human are under assault,” said SASN Dean Jacqueline Mattis. “Decency, honesty, compassion, safety, critical thinking, integrity-- these sensibilities are in tension with the worst impulses that human beings can engage. This is exactly the kind of crisis that screams for the kind of clear-headed, deeply moral, unapologetic, visionary genius that is Salamishah Tillet. The Emerson Collective Fellowship could not have been awarded to a more deserving scholar. We need her voice right now."