Category: lectures & talks

Webinar: Photographers on Bearden on 11/9

Photographers on Bearden: a conversation with Frank Stewart and Chester Higgins Jr. 

Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 6:30 pm ET on Zoom 

Register here

Join renowned photographers Frank Stewart and Chester Higgins, Jr., in a conversation moderated by Dalila Scruggs, Curator of Photography and Prints at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, who will discuss their relationship with the acclaimed African-American artist, Romare Bearden, and their experiences photographing African-American artists and culture over the years. 

This event celebrates the initial release of the Romare Bearden Papers by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI). The WPI has worked closely with the Romare Bearden Foundation to make the artist’s archival collection accessible to the public in anticipation of the forthcoming Romare Bearden Digital Catalogue Raisonné. 

The Romare Bearden Papers are accessible to the public on the WPI’s Digital Archives. 

…

Frank Stewart shot his first photographs at the 1963 March on Washington and has gone on to make compelling images ever since. Stewart earned a BFA in photography from Cooper Union in 1975 and counts Roy DeCarava, Garry Winogrand, Jack Whitten, and Romare Bearden amongst his mentors. Stewart was the first photographer-in-residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where he also taught photography. He has been a member of Kamoinge, Inc. since 1982, and was the lead photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center almost three decades. Stewart is widely published, has had more than thirty solo exhibitions and is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards. His work is held in the collections of major museums including Bowdoin College Art Museum, Brunswick, Maine, the Detroit Institute of Arts; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Museum of African American Art and Culture, Washington, DC, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Stewart is the subject of an upcoming retrospective titled, Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960’s to the Present, that opens at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, in June 2023.

Chester Higgins Jr. is a photographer known for his eloquent images of the life and culture of African Americans and the people of the African Diaspora. He counts P. H. Polk, Arthur Rothstein, Cornell Capa, Gordon Parks and Romare Bearden amongst his mentors. He was a staff photographer for the New York Times from 1975 to 2014. Widely published, his photographs have appeared in magazines including Ebony, Essence, Fortune, LIFE, Look, Newsweek, and TIME, and in several books including Sacred Nile, Echo of the Spirit and Elder Grace. His work has appeared in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently The Indelible Spirit at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery. He has received fellowships and grants  from the International Center of Photography, The Ford Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. His photographs are included in the following permanent collections: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, the Library of Congress, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.

Dalila Scruggs is Curator for Photography and Prints at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She earned a Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University, where she focused on African American art. She has held curatorial positions at the Williams College Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and served as the Brooklyn Museum’s Museum Education Fellowship Coordinator.

…
The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc. (WPI) is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the study of art history and to fostering the accessibility, cataloguing, and digitization of archival materials that support critical research in the field.

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Intersecting Photographies — Symposium at Howard University, Oct. 13-15, 2022

Register now!

The symposium, “Intersecting Photographies,” will be held at Howard University in Washington, DC, from October 13-15, 2022. Among the presentations and conversations that will be fostered there are an artist conversation between LaToya Ruby Frazier and Leslie Ureña, a keynote lecture by Tina Campt, a pecha kucha featuring lightning talks, and six panels presenting more in-depth research questions. To view the complete schedule online, which also includes an awards ceremony, receptions, and Saturday workshops hosted at DC-area institutions by local experts, please view our Symposium page. 

You must be a Photography Network Member to register for the symposium, with annual dues beginning as low as $20. Click on the registration button and follow the instructions to register for the In-Person ($50) or Online ($20) experience. We apologize that our website does not offer the capability of joining or renewing your membership and registering for the symposium in a single transaction. 

Photography Network is a 501(C)3 and College Art Association Affiliated Society whose purpose is to foster discussion, research, and new approaches to the study and practice of photography in its relation to art, culture, society, and history. Through a range of programming, Photography Network (PN) cultivates a spirit of community and exchange with the aim of advancing innovation in the field.

We encourage you to register early for the symposium. We do not have a registration cap, but availability is limited at the three DC-area hotels with whom we have made arrangements for discounted rates. Additionally, three of the four optional Saturday workshops will be collections-focused at area institutions including the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, and National Museum of American History, where space is necessarily limited; the fourth, with the National Museum of the American Indian, will be held over Zoom to accommodate those participating in the symposium remotely. 

If you encounter any problems during the registration process, please reach out to us at photographynetworksymposium@gmail.com. We thank the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation for their generous support of this program.

Amalia Amaki at the Photography Network Virtual Symposium [October 7-9, 2021]

Artist and scholar Amalia Amaki will be our Keynote for “The Material and the Virtual in Photographic Histories” (October 7-9, 2021). The First Symposium of the Photography Network will be held virtually, jointly hosted by the Photography Network and Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen. We are looking forward to our conversation with her on Thursday, October 7 at 4:00-4:45 pm UTC (12:00–12:45 pm EST) about her impressive art range and her ability to stretch the limits of photography’s materiality. The three-day symposium will pair previously recorded presentations (now available to registered attendees) with live roundtable discussions and Q&A sessions on October 7th, 8th, and 9th.

Registration is open and the presentation videos are live for the First Symposium of the Photography Network (October 7–9, 2021), a virtual event. Register now! Registration for this free event is now open. Symposium attendees are required to be current Photography Network members in good standing. Annual membership is $20 (student/unaffiliated), $40 (Affiliated), or $100 (Sustaining Member). Please visit the Photography Network’s website for more information on how to join. Once a member, link to the live sessions under the Account feature by clicking “Symposium_live (affiliated).”

Web Series: Garden for Boston project

In late June, the MFA Boston will share the Garden for Boston project, two outdoor installations on the green spaces of the Museum’s main entrance by Roxbury-based artist Ekua Holmes and Aquinnah Wampanoag artist Elizabeth James-Perry. Holmes will plant 3000 sunflowers in raised beds in Radiant Community, related to Sunflower Project, her ongoing initiative to beautify the city and particularly Roxbury. In Raven Reshapes Boston, James-Perry will use Indigenous planting techniques to transform the grass around the Cyrus Dallin sculpture, which represents an invented Native man, into a field of corn and other plants surrounded by shells. We hope that their installations will be the first two of many to intervene in the Museum’s facade.

In anticipation of this exciting project, Marina Tyquiengco and Martina Tanga have organized a series of three Zoom culminating in a conversation between the artists on June 22. This series will recognize Boston as a place of Native and Black histories and lived experiences through the expertise of artists, scholars, and thought leaders. Below is a list of the titles, times, and speakers in each program and a link to sign up.

Before Boston: Black and Native Histories of Place

May 18 @ 5:30 pm

zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uXsQ1r1ORHGse2enD1EIlA

With Elizabeth Solomon, Dr. Jean O’Brien, and Dr. Kerri Greenidge

Community Crossroads: Black and Native Experiences in Boston

June 1 @ 5pm

zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FP5wI0sLS6m8HJYHAvlzRA

With Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King, Professor Mwalim Peters, and Mary McNeil

Planting Together: Conversation with Ekua Holmes and Elizabeth James Perry

June 22 @ 5-6pm

zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5sNvMWAkTKufdQbOv92SMQ

Webinar: “The Lives of Monuments: Patriots of African Descent”

On June 19, 1993, the Monument to Patriots of African Descent was dedicated at Valley Forge National Historical Park. It is not only one of the newest Revolutionary War monuments in a National Park, but also the only site in the Northeast that honors African Americans’ contributions to the founding of our nation.
“The Lives of Monuments: Patriots of African Descent” is a virtual public event that brings together scholars, National Park Rangers, and members of the public to discuss Black representation in histories of the American Revolution and its monuments. Join us on Thursday May 20th from 6 to 7:30pm ET by following this link to register: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_I4FFyH_BR2ur3vefrnmK1Q. Tune in ten minutes early to see a slideshow with photographs of the monument.
The event features Dr. Paulette Jones and Mrs. Deanna Shelton (Valley Forge Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc.), Dr. Renée Ater (Public Scholar and Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland), and Ranger Steven Walter (Park Guide at Valley Forge NHP). They will discuss the process of commissioning the Monument to Patriots of African Descent, the history of sites that commemorate or exclude Black Americans from public culture, and the National Park Service’s role in foregrounding racially diverse histories of the American Revolution.
It is the third installment in the five-part webinar series “The Lives of Monuments: Memory, Revolution, and Our National Parks.” The series is organized by Dr. Emma Silverman, National Park Service Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow, and it is made possible by the National Park Foundation with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The May 20th event is also co-hosted by the Valley Forge Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Follow the links below to register for upcoming webinars:
June 17, 2021 from 6 to 7:30pm EST, “The Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier–Vandalism and the Legacy of the Founding Fathers” (Independence National Historical Park)
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uosA5wQUSFGG8CZML1-jFg
July 8, 2021 from 6 to 7:30pm EST, “The General von Steuben Statue—Interpreting the Revolution’s ‘Gay General’ and LGBTQ+ Histories in the Early Republic” (Valley Forge National Historical Park)
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qfz3kjnpSo2j7CYJJoRfUg
Recordings of all “Lives of Monuments” events will be available on the National Park Service YouTube channel soon.
Contact Emma_Silverman@partner.nps.gov with questions.

The Association of Print Scholars’ 2021 Distinguished Scholar Lecture by Dr. Curlee Raven Holton (May 7, 2021)

The Association of Print Scholars extends an invitation to members/subscribers of ACRAH to its upcoming Distinguished Scholar Lecture entitled “Being an Artist, Printmaker, and Creative Collaborator,” to be delivered by Dr. Curlee Raven Holton, Director of the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland via Zoom on May 7, 2021 at 3 PM (EST). 


Additional information about the lecture and the registration link is available online:

https://printscholars.org/rsvp/aps-sixth-annual-dsl-curlee-raven-holton/)

LEC: “An Immigrant’s View: Ben Shahn Paints America”

“An Immigrant’s View: Ben Shahn Paints America” with Diana Linden, Ph.D.

Wednesday, February 10 at 6 pm EST

Free; Registration required


Join us virtually for a discussion with Diana Linden, Ph.D. as she explores the life and art of Ben Shahn (1898-1969). Born in Lithuania, Shahn immigrated to New York with his family at six years old. He apprenticed with a lithographer at a young age and studied for a short time at the National Academy of Design as well as the Art Students League. Shahn’s career took off beginning in the 1930s, which is the decade Linden’s conversation centers on. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.

Register on Eventbrite

Dr. Diana L. Linden is the author of Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (2015) along with many other works on Shahn, New York City Jewish artists, and New Deal Art. In 2019, she won the Frost Essay Award for best article in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s journalAmerican Art. She has also previously written on the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation for The Magazine Antiques. 

In celebration of the centennial of Chaim Gross’s immigration to the United States, the Foundation is focusing our 2021 programming on illuminating the stories of artists and immigrants in the collection. Our winter and spring programming is centered around Eastern European emigrants.

LEC: The Recovery Plan Conversation Series

STUDIO ARTS COLLEGE INTERNATIONAL
The Recovery Plan Conversation Series

Studio Arts College International (SACI) is delighted to announce The Recovery Plan Conversation Series: African Diasporic reflections rooted in Italy. Offered by Black History Month Florence (BHMF) and developed and moderated by SACI project leader and BHMF co-founder, Justin Randolph Thompson in collaboration with Museo MAGA Gallarate near Milan and with SACI, this 6 part series of critical conversations explores Afro-descendent perspectives on Italy through the partnering of 5 under-35 Afro-descendent artists living in Italy alongside 5 Afro-descendent Italian based scholars. Each paring of artist and scholar is established, in each instance, through a dynamic positioning of individual art work alongside research and archival findings in Italy on the basis of a common theme related to Blackness in the Italian socio-historical context. As one of multiple features of the project titled The Recovery Plan including the first museum solo exhibition for each of the artists that will be presented at MAGA over the course of the fall semester, Justin Randolph Thompson will moderate these 5 conversations between October and December. A sixth and final session will be a live and interactive conversation with Thompson accompanied by Janine Gaelle Dieudji, co-curator of The Recovery Plan, where they will be speaking about curatorial activism in the context of this project. A designated question and answer period addressing questions posed by online partcipants is designed to generate dialogue and reflections that can extend back to the classrooms or discussion groups of participating institutions.

SACI is dedicated to supporting diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives in Italy and is a strong supporter of BHMF as an organization including its Italian based project activities such as Black History Month Florence, Black Archive Alliance, and The Recovery Plan.

These projects are illustrative of the dynamic artistic and research activity taking place today in Italy and in Europe. We hope you will join us in these
critical conversations that highlight the seminal roles that, in tandem, artists and scholars can play in engaging in forms of social activism through the recuperation of silenced histories and untold stories of communities and of people, too often marginalized and excluded from local discourses and or national conversations.

Moderated Conversations and Dates
The Recovery Plan, in its pop-up version, serves as the foundation for an initiative by BHMF to develop a Black Cultural Center in Florence as a site dedicated to this work which will serve the community of Florence and
be pioneering as the first of its kind in Italy.

In each session, Thompson will guide a conversation in English with a paired artist and scholar on a different theme corresponding to their artistic, scholary, and archival work from The Recovery Plan. Exclusively registered participants will join the online conversation live via zoom. The artists and scholars will share virtual visits to the pop-up exhibition space at Museo MA*GA Gallarte which will serve as a backdrop to each respective conversation theme and as a reflection on artistic and academic forms of research, while the moderator will lead the dialogue providing contextual backdrops rooted in various periods of Italian history and contemporary society. All sessions will begin at 11 pm Central European Time and will be 90 minutes in length. The Conversations will take place every two weeks with the exception of the concluding discussion. The schedule, artist/scholar pairings, and themes are as follows:

Tuesday, Sept 29:
Italianness and the Colonial Gaze
Binta Diaw with Angelica Pesarini

Tuesday, Oct 13:
Spirituality in Diaspora
Raziel Perin with Simao Amista

Tuesday, Oct 27:
Coffee’s Materiality and Exploitation
Francis Offman with Jessica Sartiani

Tuesday, Nov 10:
Cameroonian Roots in Italy
Victor Fotso Nyie with Patrick Joel Tatcheda Yonkeu

Tuesday, Nov 24:
Jerry Masslo and Italian Based Anti Racist Activism
Emmanuel Yoro with Jordan Anderson

Tuesday, Dec 1:
Curatorial Activism
Justin Randolph Thompson and Janine Gaelle Dieudji


Registration and Fees

Universities can enroll in the complete series of 6 sessions or in one or more of the individual conversations. We highly recommend the entire offering as The Recovery Plan is a unique and groundbreaking initiative in Italy and as the 5 paired artist/scholar conversations followed by the unifying sixth and final session were purposefully selected and organized to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of Blackness as considered through art, scholarship and archival work in the Italian socio-historical context and as linked to curatorial activism. We encourage and welcome all student, faculty, and staff of a registering institution to participate under a single university registration but ask that registering institutions extend these lectures to only student, faculty, and staff members of the registering instution’s community. Please contact Racini Aranda, SACI Director of Admissions to register or for additional questions about registration or payment information at RAranda@saci-florence.edu.

Fees:
Full Series: $995
Individual Conversation: $250
100% of proceeds go to funding The Recovery Plan and the artists and scholars associated with the project. As SACI’s goal is to ensure that this initiative is as broadly accessible as possible to all types of institutions, discounts are available on the basis of institutional need. Please contact Racini Aranda for questions related to institutional discounts.

CFP: “The ‘Long’ 18th Century” at Journal18/CAA2021

The “Long” 18th Century?

This issue of Journal18 takes off from the ubiquity of the phrase “the long nineteenth century.” Proliferating in calls for participation and panel descriptions–not to mention its prominent position in the description of this journal–if the mark of an elongated eighteenth century is inescapable, we propose that this terminology merits further scrutiny. What is meant by the “long” eighteenth century? From which vantage points, and for whom, is it long? And to what ends has this elongation been directed?

It is our contention that we must understand the rise of a “long” eighteenth century alongside the significant transformation of art historical inquiry into expanded geographical and cultural terrains. Since 2003, the study of eighteenth-century art has been enriched by a new commitment to “worlding,” even if decolonizing art histories remains an ongoing and incomplete project. As a result, habitual chronological slices, whether defined by European political history or by European stylistic shifts (e.g., Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical), have been ripe for reconsideration as scholars have asked new questions about the transmission and sedimentation of practices, experiences, and art objects around the world. When the focus on histories of colonialism and slavery forces us to look anew at the bodies, lands, and knowledge presented in art, how do our narratives change and how do the sites and objects of our inquiry shift? What are the implications of this broadened scope of inquiry for habits of locution and the habits of mind that underwrite them? While the habitual slicing up of Britain’s eighteenth century to 1688–1815 is not that far out of alignment with France’s 1643–1815, it looks very different from the perspective of, for instance, South Asia, where an end point has tended rather to be located in the 1830s. What impact, if any, has a “worlding” of art history had upon our thinking about the relative length or shortness, narrowness or breadth, of the eighteenth century? What conceptually binds an eighteenth century once we have taken up the project of tracking the entanglements of art, commerce, and empire across worlds? For whom is the eighteenth century long, from what vantage points, whether local, regional, or transregional, and to what ends? And what relationship does this designation have to the equally omnipresent “long” nineteenth century, as well as to accounts of the Enlightenment, its seductions, and its repercussions?

We invite contributions that reflect upon a “long” and “broad” eighteenth century–its contours, analytic possibilities, and limits. We particularly welcome submissions that explore new models for tracking intellectual and artistic through-lines and inheritances, and that spur us to rethink periodization, or stylistic terminology that has been too often limited in its utility by being yoked to the goal of a successional narrative telos. Authors are encouraged to explore this wide-angle view by way of one term, one object, one phenomenon, or one margin. We welcome interventions that originate in art history or in other allied humanistic disciplines.

Issue Editors: Sarah Betzer, University of Virginia & Dipti Khera, New York University

Proposals for Journal18 issue #12 THE “LONG” 18TH CENTURY? are now being accepted.

To submit a proposal, send an abstract of 250 words (or 500 words for multi-authored proposals) and a brief biography to editor@journal18.org and sbetzer@virginia.edu.

Accepted participants will be invited to virtually convene for a panel in February 2021 under the auspices of the College Art Association annual conference for presentation and collaborative workshopping of their contributions.

Information on how to apply for CAA panel, sponsored by the American Society for 18th Century Studies, THE “LONG” 18TH CENTURY?:  https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html
Co-chairs: Sarah Betzer, University of Virginia and Dipti Khera, New York University
Email: sb4fg@virginia.edu; dipti.khera@nyu.edu

 

Lecture on the Making of the American “Oriental” — SF Public Library, Sat., May 11, 2019, 2 PM

 

978-0-252-08325-9-frontcover

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