Mel Harper is a maker and art educator living and working in Washington, DC. Mel crafts interpretation for National Gallery of Art exhibitions by day, and collaborates with DC-area visual and theater artists on conceptual projects by night.

Since 2012, Mel has production-managed Holly Bass’ interdisciplinary, social practice performances, including Black Space (2015), a community-based conceptual art installation, performance space, and public program series; and The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company (TATTCo) (2018-present). For TATTCo, Mel designed a one-on-one talk-back model to follow each performance, where trained interviewers engaged audience members in intimate conversation about the themes of the show, recording their reflections in “Freedom Journals.” From 2018-2019, Mel served as assistant producer for the earth, that is sufficient, a year-long iterative performance project founded by Annalisa Dias in response to the climate crisis.

Mel received her MA from Howard University, where she taught African American art history and managed the Prints & Photographs collection at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, a repository and archive of the African Diaspora.