In Conversation: Nicholas Ma, Yo-Yo Ma, and Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy

We invite you to join us for a keynote conversation in the museum’s Great Hall with Yo-Yo Ma, his son Nicholas Ma, and former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, featuring a cello performance by Yo-Yo.

The conversation, moderated by acclaimed actor and humanitarian Alfre Woodard, will explore themes of conflict transformation, faith, loneliness, and the power of human connection to serve a common good.

Tickets are $30 ($25 for members), reserve your spot online or with Guest Experience at (479) 657-2335 today.

Nicholas Ma

Nicholas Ma is an award-winning director, writer, and producer based in Brooklyn. He produced the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? about the life of Fred Rogers, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and most recently the WNBA documentary Unfinished Business, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.

His feature directorial debut, Mabel (San Francisco International Film Festival, 2024), which he co-wrote with Joy Goodwin, was awarded the Sloan Prize. Previously, he directed the award-winning short documentary Suite No. 1, Prelude (New York Film Festival, 2019).

Nicholas has been a DOC NYC fellow and Film Independent Fellow. Prior to his career in film, he covered global economic policy on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after working as a consultant in New York and Shanghai. He received his MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is a graduate of Harvard College.

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity. Most recently, Yo-Yo began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society.

Yo-Yo is an advocate for a future guided by humanity, trust, and understanding. Among his many roles, Yo-Yo is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, a member of the board of Nia Tero, the US-based nonprofit working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and movements worldwide, and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad.

Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBA

Dr. Vivek Murthy served as the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States. As Vice Admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, he commanded a uniformed service of 6,000 public health officers.

Dr. Murthy’s work has widened the lens through which we understand forces that shape our health and well-being. He has drawn attention to critical, underappreciated health issues including the epidemic of loneliness, the impact of social media on youth mental health, parental mental health and well-being, the youth mental health crisis, and health worker burnout.

In 2020, Dr. Murthy published the New York Times best-seller Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. His 2025 “Parting Prescription to America” laid out a vision for rebuilding community as the key to health, happiness, and fulfillment.

Raised in Miami, Dr. Murthy graduated from Harvard College and received his MD from the Yale School of Medicine and his MBA from the Yale School of Management. He trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. A renowned physician, research scientist, entrepreneur, and author, Dr. Murthy lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Dr. Alice Chen, and their two children.

Alfre Woodard

Alfre Woodard is an actor and producer whose illustrious body of work includes her Academy Award-nominated performance in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek; BAFTA Award-nominated role in Clemency; Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, HBO’s Mandela; Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon; John Sayles’s Passion Fish; Joseph Sargent’s Miss Evers’ Boys, for which she won Emmy, SAG, and Golden Globe Awards; Spike Lee’s Crooklyn; Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love and Basketball; Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys; Maya Angelou’s Down in the Delta; played Betty Applewhite on the ABC drama Desperate Housewives; and Ruby Jean Reynolds, mother to Lafayette Reynolds, on HBO’s True Blood. Woodard co-starred in Lifetime’s hit remake of Steel Magnolias, in which she was nominated for a SAG and Emmy Award and won an NAACP Image Award for her performance as Ouiser.

Woodard has been nominated for 17 Emmy Awards (winning four), seven SAG Awards (winning three), three Golden Globe Awards (winning one), 21 NAACP awards (winning nine), and three Independent Spirit Awards (winning one). She received a BAFTA award, a Gotham award, and an Independent Spirt Award nomination for her leading role in Neon’s CLEMENCY. Her performance in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek earned her an Academy Award nomination.

In addition to her acting career, Woodard is an influential activist who, for 25 years, worked to support human rights, democracy, and the fight against HIV/AIDS in South Africa. In 2009, US President Barack Obama appointed Woodard to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, where she helped establish the Turnaround Arts Initiative as a way to narrow the achievement gap and increase student engagement across the country. She also works in support of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Sponsored by Reed Greenwood, Malcolm and Ellen Hayward, and Jason and Carol Vella.