Dessane Lopez Cassell

Dessane Lopez Cassell is a New York-based editor, writer, and curator. Her work focuses on moving image and visual art concerned with race, gender, labor, and decoloniality, with a particular interest in voices from the African and Caribbean diasporas.

Cassell's writing has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Seen journal, Film Comment, Metrograph Journal, and Hyperallergic, as well as in books and catalogues published by Paper Monument, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum, among others. She has curated exhibitions and screenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Metrograph, MoMA, the Studio Museum, Anthology Film Archives, and the Black Women’s Film Conference, and served on the programming team for BlackStar Film Festival from 2018 to 2023. Cassell is Vice President of the board of The Flaherty and was named a DOC NYC Documentary New Leader in 2022.

Previously, Cassell served as Editor-in-Chief of BlackStar’s journal, Seen, where she platformed. film, art, and visual culture writing by and about people of color, carving out more opportunities for nuanced, slow journalism. Prior to joining Seen, she was the reviews editor at Hyperallergic, where she focused on championing writers and artists from underrepresented communities and growing the publication’s film coverage.