The ‘State’ of Baltimore: Preservation and Memory as Tools for Revolution featuring Brennan DuBose, JJ McQueen, Martina Dodd, and Webster Phillips with Alanah Nichole Davis moderating
Community Gallery
Maryland Center for History and Culture
610 Park Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21201

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This year’s The ‘State’ of Baltimore will be a timely conversation about who gets to document a city and why it matters. Featuring Brennan DuBose, Winston Phillips, Martina Dodd, and J.J. McQueen. Moderated by the dynamic Alanah Nichole Davis, an award-winning journalist and cultural worker known for her community-rooted interviews and narrative work, this panel brings together visual storytellers working at the intersection of history, culture, and civic life. The conversation will explore how images, film, and archives shape public memory and influence the future of Baltimore. They will examine preservation, not as passive reflection, but as an active, even radical, practice. What does it mean to capture Baltimore in real time while honoring its past? How can interviews, documentation, and storytelling serve as both record and resistance? Attendees can expect an exchange grounded in lived experience, offering new ways to think about memory as infrastructure for change and storytelling as a tool for revolution. With a PhD in English from Columbia University, Brennan DuBose is the President and CEO of Lincoln Motion, a research and film production house advancing the next chapter of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, America’s first Black production studio. Martina Dodd is an art historian, writer, and curator who specializes in the preservation, study, and expansion of African American-centered collections. Chief Photographer for the Mayor of Baltimore City, J.J. McQueen, an award-winning photographer and visual storyteller with 25+ years of experience, was featured in Forbes. He creates compelling, authentic visuals that inform and inspire, bringing stories to life with precision, creativity, and depth. Webster Phillips III is a third-generation photographer of the ihenryphoto project with a database of over 10,000 images documenting the history of Baltimore. The ‘State’ is moderated by Alanah Nichole Davis, whose work in and beyond Baltimore’s Mayor’s Office insists on the practice of preserving the city in real time, centering interviews as living archives.

Visit the News Section for detailed information.

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CityLit Project in partnership with Maryland Center for History and Culture present Bearing Witness: Literature as a Revolutionary Act. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 11, 2026. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.

Download the CityLit Festival: Bearing Witness flyer with the schedule.

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