YMI Cultural Center Celebrates Black History, Wellness, and the Arts
A vibrant and meaningful slate of events in honor of Juneteenth.
The YMI Cultural Center is offering a vibrant and meaningful slate of events in honor of Juneteenth, designed to uplift Black resilience, culture, wellness, and economic empowerment.
This year’s offerings create a rich tapestry of engagement, reflection, and celebration across The Block.
Kicking off the week is the Ujima Virtual 5K, taking place throughout the week of June 14 and culminating in an in-person community walk on Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 10 a.m. The spirit of collective work and responsibility continues with the Ujima Health Fair Initiative, offering wellness screenings, health check-ups, and resources to inspire sustainable healthy living, following the model successfully launched during our Kwanzaa observance.
From June 16 through July 12, 2025, the YMI is hosting a pop-up art exhibition, “An America As Good As Its Promise,” in Suites A & B—with a special Juneteenth activity featuring music, libations, and root beer floats for all. The YMI’s main gallery will feature “And Still We Rise,” an evocative exhibition by local artist Jenny Pickens, celebrating the beauty and perseverance of Black identity.
Throughout the day on Juneteenth, June 19, 2025, the YMI will host timed walking history tours of our historic building—A Tour in Black Resilience—at 12, 2, and 4 p.m. These free tours will guide guests through the enduring legacy of the oldest Black cultural center in the nation. Register online at www.ymiculturalcenter.org/events.
The celebration extends across The Block beginning at 10 a.m., with food, vendors, and family-friendly festivities. Local partners including The Noir Collective and Eagle Market Street will also host walking tours highlighting the economic history and cultural significance of Black entrepreneurship in Asheville.
All event information, including times, locations, and ticket links, is available at www.ymiculturalcenter.org.
About YMI Cultural Center
YMI Cultural Center is one of the oldest operating African American cultural centers in the United States. Built in 1893, it is located downtown in the historic Black business district within the oldest Black neighborhood in Asheville, East End / Valley Street. Despite the changing landscape, YMI has maintained its reputation as the cultural and community focal point for Black Ashevillians and other visitors to this region.
After a two-year renovation project, YMI opens its doors with a fully equipped ballroom, two new education centers, and a remodeled art gallery. YMI also welcomes a new visionary, Sean Hasker Palmer, as its new Executive Director.
YMI Cultural Center 2025-26 Curatorial Statement
The late Nikki Giovanni was a poet from Affrilachia who wrote a poem titled, “Knoxville Tennessee,” about visiting her grandmother’s house and feeling the kind of warmth that made for loving relationships. She reminisces on the colocation of time, space, hospitality, familiarity and memory in this work. Thus, as we return home from the journey of renovation in every possible way, we ready ourselves to throw open our doors to welcome our many constituents into our spaces.
We are excited to convene community, celebrate successes, educate, empower, and embrace wellness.
This year’s slate of programming seeks to consider what it means to embody a spirit of teranga, the Senegalese Wolof word for “good/radical hospitality.” For sure, we seek to be a place or radical hospitality, asking how can we serve our community better. At the same time, we raise questions about hospitality and tourism and how our Black histories are tethered to the legacies of those industries. We ask, “What can we learn from our unique past in the mountains, where snow and ice must be tempered by invitations of warmth and comfort?”
We invite our communities—local, regional, and national—to experience a renaissance in the hills, where we seek to gather as often as we can to be as warm as a visit to our “grandma’s” house, as enlightened as when we cook greens with our “aunties,” and with all the joy as when our uncles stop by to sit on the porch and make us laugh. We invite all who come home to the YMI Cultural center, to come on in… “and be warm.”
YMI Cultural Center is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Saturdays by appointment.
