Join the Academy Museum for an evening with two-time Academy Award–winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter for an illustrative look at her legendary career. The event will include a book signing and a conversation.

The program will visually explore Carter’s early work, iconic characters, and upcoming book The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther. Carter’s work in Black Panther (2018) is featured in the museum’s Inventing Worlds and Characters: Encounters gallery in the Stories of Cinema exhibition.


Conversation moderated by Academy Museum Director and President Jaqueline Stewart



Schedule
5–6:30pm | Book Signing
Ted Mann Lobby on Lower Level 1.


7–8pm | Conversation with Ruth E. Carter
Ted Mann Theater


Ticket Options
$20 – includes access to the conversation
$65 – includes access to the conversation, a signed copy of the book, and the meet and greet


Ruth E. Carter
Ruth E. Carter is a two-time Academy Award–winning costume designer. Best known for turning the Black Panther superhero into an African king, Carter made history as the first Black person to win the Costume Design Oscar, earning Marvel Studios their first Oscar win.

For her outstanding costume design work in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Carter again made history as she became the first Black woman to win multiple Academy Awards in any category and the first costume designer to win for the first film and its sequel.


Carter pays tribute to the people of Africa through the costumes in Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She fuses traditional and contemporary while incorporating technology to deliver fashion and function, creating Afrofuturistic pieces that empower the female form, honor ancient cultures, and invoke a deep sense of representation unlike any other costumes experienced on screen.

Over three decades in film, television, and theater, Carter has earned seventy credits and collaborated with prolific directors, including Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler. Carter’s costumes based on real and imaginative characters provide an arc to the narratives of African Americans from Do the Right Thing (1989), Malcolm X (1992), What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993), Amistad (1997), The Butler (2013), Selma (2014), Marshall (2017), Dolemite Is My Name (2019), and Coming 2 America (2021) to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Her devotion to retraining the eye to see beauty through costume design and telling stories that enrich the humanity of the Black experience cements her legacy as a preeminent voice and expert on period genres and Afro aesthetics.

Carter's outstanding costume design work has been honored with Academy Award nominations for Malcolm X and Amistad and an Emmy nomination for the miniseries reboot of Roots (2016). The impact of her career in filmmaking has been recognized with the Costume Designers Guild's Career Achievement Award (2019) and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2021). She is also a member of the Board of Governors for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.