Rhea Beckett is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and founder of Black Artist Research Space (BARS). BARS began as her 2014 thesis at MICA, when she stepped away from music performance to study the role of the curator and the intersection of artistic production, collaboration, and community engagement. Since then, BARS has evolved into a platform for creatives and functions as an extension of her artistic practice.

Beckett works across sound, design, performance, painting, and photography, while BARS acts as organizer, researcher, and collaborator. Through BARS, Beckett has supported hundreds of emerging to mid-mid career artists, along with various communities to create space through experimentation, dialogue, and collective inquiry.

Rhea Beckett received her BS Art from Fisk University (Nashville, TN) and MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

Rhea is a classically trained singer and was a soprano in the Grammy Award winning Fisk Jubilee Singers from 2009-2013 (National Medal of Arts recipient, 2008). She sings in four languages and has over twenty years of on-stage performance experience.

Rhea currently creates from Baltimore, MD where she has been a professor of art for the past eight years.

Her current project Sonic Cartographies can be explored here.