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Curry J. Hackett

He // Him // His

Multimedia Artist and Educator

Brooklyn, New York

A portrait of a Black American man, mid-30s, with brown skin and red undertones, and thick, shoulder-length locs. He is wearing a teal knit zippered sweater over a khaki collared shirt, and standing in front of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Photo by Gary Williams.

“My practice moves between design, media, and public art to narrate spectral stories embedded in the built realm.”

Curry J. Hackett is a transdisciplinary designer, visual artist, and educator exploring Black relationships to land, media, and memory. A Farmville, Virginia native, Hackett’s work works across scales and mediums to speculate on the aesthetics and ecologies of the American South.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Metropolis, among others. He has exhibited at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and the Making Home Smithsonian Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Hackett holds architecture degrees from Howard University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and currently serves as Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

This artist page was last updated on: 01.14.2026

Architecture & Design
Dozens of bundled tobacco leaves line the walls of a gallery, framing textiles, a small television screen, and an antique mirror.

Installation view of So That You All Won't Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia by Curry J. Hacket at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

There Are Other Channels thumbnail.

There Are Other Channels by Curry J. Hackett, a single-channel speculative "film" created as part of the So That You All Won't Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia installation for the Making Home Smithsonian Design Triennial.

A Baptism Story by Curry J. Hackett. A sound collage incorporating audio from a phone conversation with the artist’s mother, Penny Stiff Hackett, about her childhood baptism in a creek in rural Virginia.