P. Muzi Branch
P. Muzi Branch is a Richmond, Virginia–based visual artist, cultural theorist, arts educator, musician, and arts administrator whose career spans more than four decades. His interdisciplinary practice brings together African American visual culture, higher education, arts leadership, healthcare, music, and community advocacy. Through these intersecting areas of work, he explores African American identity, history, spirituality, cultural memory, and the relationship between artistic expression and communal life.

Branch earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1980 and a Master of Art Education in 1986 from Virginia Commonwealth University. He currently serves as an adjunct professor and University-Based Teacher Educator in Art Education at VCU. His previous academic appointments include Associate Professor of Art at Virginia State University and faculty positions at Virginia Union University and Saint Paul’s College. He also served as Assistant Director and Arts Coordinator at the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School for the Arts and Technology, where he helped establish the school’s visual arts facilities, technical resources, and academic framework.

For eighteen years, Branch served as Director of Arts in Healthcare at VCU Health. He directed visual art, music, and therapeutic arts programming for patients, families, and staff; supervised board-certified art and music therapists; and commissioned and curated artwork for clinical and public spaces. At VCU Massey Cancer Center, he broadened the program to include complementary practices such as Qigong, Reiki, and Jin Shin Jyutsu. His work within the healthcare system demonstrated how cultural representation, creative engagement, and thoughtfully designed environments can contribute to healing and well-being.

Branch is President of the Black American Artists’ Alliance of Richmond, an organization dedicated to the study, advocacy, and advancement of culture-based African American visual art. He is also President and co-founder of Branches of the Arts, Inc., a nonprofit organization that supports artists, exhibitions, public art, and community cultural initiatives. He was selected for the inaugural cohort of the National Leaders of Color Fellowship, a national leadership-development program organized by the six United States Regional Arts Organizations.

As a practicing artist, Branch has presented more than twenty solo exhibitions in museums, universities, hospitals, galleries, and cultural institutions. His paintings, prints, and mixed-media works have also appeared in national juried exhibitions and international cultural festivals, including PANAFEST in Cape Coast, Ghana. Other exhibition venues include the African American Museum in Dallas, the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, the National Institutes of Health, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, and the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University. His work is held in numerous institutional and private collections, including those of the African American Museum in Dallas, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, and VCU Health. His honors include the Robert J. Alfonso Award for socially and politically engaged art and a purchase award from the Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Competition.

Branch has also conducted mural residencies through the Virginia Commission for the Arts, working with students and communities throughout the Commonwealth. His approach to public art emphasizes collaboration, cultural knowledge, and the ability of collective creativity to strengthen community identity.

During his career as a graphic designer and illustrator, Branch served as art director for Black Fire Records and N.A.M.E. Brand Records. He created album artwork for recording artists including Oneness of Juju, Plunky & Oneness, the Southern Energy Ensemble, Kevin Christopher Teasley, Paris Ford, and Wayne Davis.

Known professionally as Muzi, Branch is also an accomplished bassist, songwriter, and recording artist. He has performed and recorded with the internationally recognized African diasporic jazz and funk ensemble Plunky & Oneness of Juju, and his compositions appear on several of the group’s recordings. His experience in music continues to inform his visual art through rhythm, improvisation, collective expression, and African diasporic aesthetics.

Branch is the author of What Is African American Art? A Philosophical Inquiry, a completed book manuscript that examines African American visual art as a culture-based canon shaped by cultural competence, intention, alignment, and service to African American cultural life.

Link for Plunky and Oneness

Link for BAAAR

Teaching Artist Roster