Stephanie Dinkins grew up in Tottenville, at the far southern tip of Staten Island. On Saturday, November 14, she returns to the borough with a major solo exhibition at the Staten Island Museum at Snug Harbor, Anchoring Home, which opens to the public with a free afternoon reception from 2 to 4 p.m.

Dinkins is a transdisciplinary artist and educator whose work sits where technology, race, community and the living world meet. Her recent honors include a 2025 Lincoln Center Collider Fellowship, a Schmidt AI 2050 Senior Fellowship and the first LG Guggenheim Award, given in 2023. The same year, Time named her to its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence.

A show that is built from stories

The museum describes Anchoring Home as participatory and sensory, a set of interactive experiences that rethink how people, technology and nature relate to one another. At its center is an immersive piece in which an artificial intelligence system takes stories collected from people and turns them into a single narrative that keeps changing as it runs. Visitors move through it rather than look at it from a distance.

The questions behind the show are the ones Dinkins has worked on for years: who gets to shape the future of AI, and how such systems could be designed together, around equity, care and shared decision making, rather than handed down to the communities that live with them. Bringing that work to a natural history and art museum on Richmond Terrace, a few miles from the neighborhood she grew up in, ties it to a specific place and the people in it.

Two ways in during opening week

  • Members' preview: Thursday, November 12, 6 to 8 p.m., for Staten Island Museum members.
  • Public opening: Saturday, November 14, 2 to 4 p.m. Admission is free, donations are welcome, and the museum recommends registering in advance through the event page.

After opening day, the show can be seen during regular museum hours; the museum has not yet posted a closing date. The museum's suggested general admission is $8 for adults, $5 for students and seniors and $2 for children ages 2 to 12; members visit free. Snug Harbor also sells a $20 Discovery Pass covering several of its attractions.

The museum at Snug Harbor

The Staten Island Museum's Snug Harbor home is in Building A of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, the campus of nineteenth-century buildings and gardens on the North Shore that once housed retired sailors. The museum combines natural science, art and history collections under one roof, and its calendar this month also includes crafting afternoons and family programs alongside the new exhibition.

How to go

The Staten Island Museum at Snug Harbor is at 1000 Richmond Terrace, Building A, Staten Island, NY 10301. From the St. George Ferry Terminal, the S40 and S44 buses run west along Richmond Terrace and stop at the Snug Harbor gates, a ride of about ten minutes. There is parking on the Snug Harbor grounds.

Register for the November 14 opening on the museum's event page. Members can find preview details on the museum's events calendar.

Sources