Collections by Michelle Brown WSG Gregory T Walker & The Brothers Network

In an article in Philadelphia Magazine Gregory T. Walke. Founder and Creative Director of The Brothers Network, explained “It seems that many Americans, white, black and in between, view black men through a certain frame of reference that fails to acknowledge the totality of the black male experience. At the museum, the black man is the security guard rather than the person who created the works on the walls; at the theater, he is the usher rather than part of the action on the stage or the person behind that action.

And in the everyday world, the black men who do create works of art, who do write plays, and who love to talk about the ideas they advance, get confused for those guards and ushers.

Walker believes the hardest part is getting people to believe that MacArthur Genius Award winners, Tony Award winners, and winners of most every single honor have been held by a black man who is at the top of the game.

The Brother’s Network dismantles these assumptions. The organization specializes in bringing brainy black men together around arts and culture.The people who attend The Brothers’ Network programs form a new community, one in which they no longer feel isolated.

On October 12th The Brothers Network will celebrate its anniversary with a five-course dinner, awards ceremony and an opening night performance of “Sweat.” A play written by Lynn Nottage and directed by Justin Emeka.

The Brother’s Network is just one of the many ways Walker manifests his life goal to foster a sense of equanimity in our society and have all of us recognize the value in each of us.