Join us for our Scholl lecture series, featuring the premier cultural creatives of our time, with a conversation between self-taught Afro-Cuban American painter and author Harmonia Rosales and former professional football wide receiver and art collector Desmond Howard. Rosales will share her journey from artist to author and discuss her new book, “Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic,” which features never before seen work by the artist.

About Harmonia Rosales

Harmonia Rosales is a Chicago-born, Afro-Cuban American artist and author whose work centers the visibility and empowerment of Black women in Western art. Growing up visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, Rosales was captivated by Renaissance painting—but years later, her daughter’s simple observation that “they don’t look like me” exposed the exclusion at the heart of that tradition.

That moment sparked Rosales’s artistic journey: reimagining Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces with Black protagonists and centering West African spirituality. Since 2017, her work has visualized the Orishas, the deities of the Yoruba tradition, and explored the survival of their stories across the Middle Passage. With bold, uncompromising imagery and prose, Rosales challenges Eurocentric ideals of beauty, power, and divinity, reshaping both art history and cultural consciousness.

About Desmond Howard

Heisman Trophy winner, Super Bowl XXXI MVP, and Emmy-winning ESPN College GameDay analyst Desmond Howard is forever linked to one of college football’s most iconic moments—the Heisman pose.

Beyond his TV work, community efforts, and 21at50 Health & Wellness initiative, Desmond is deepening his commitment to Black history, social justice, leadership, and the arts. Inspired by art’s role in storytelling and cultural preservation, he is building a collection of contemporary works by emerging Black artists, artists of color, and artists of the Diaspora—using art as another platform to honor and amplify diverse voices and shared values.”

About “Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic”

In “Chronicles of Ori,” her debut book, Harmonia Rosales retells the African myths she has long treasured, crafting an enthralling epic that spans the birth of the universe to the modern world of colonialism and resistance. She writes of the powerful, temperamental deities called the Orishas; of the founding of Yorubaland by the shrewd leader Oduduwa; of the young heroine Eve, born in a time of violence and despair, who would help her people regain their past splendor; and of shimmering serpents and monstrous shadows who stalk the lands of mortals. At the center of these linked tales is the bond, sometimes fraying, between the Orishas and the humans who worship them. It was the Orishas who made humans, and who gave them their most precious resource: their Oris, or destinies. Vividly brought to life by Rosales’s artwork, “Chronicles of Ori” will enlighten and delight readers for years to come.

As part of PAMM’s commitment to accessibility live translation for this program will be available in Amercian Sign Language, Spanish and Haitian Creole. The program will also be streamed live, online via PAMM’s Youtube Channel.