Category: lectures & talks

Department of Art
Celebrating 90 Years of Artistic Excellence, Innovation and Creativity

The Department of Art is proud to present a conversation with David C. Driskell (B.A. ’55), Distinguished University Professor of Art, Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park, and recipient of the Doctor of Humanities, Howard University (2010). Drawing on his experiences as a former student of James V. Herring, Professor and the department’s founder, along with James A. Porter, Loïs Mailou Jones, and James L. Wells, the artists and educators who shaped the department’s early history, Dr. Driskell will discuss the energy and excitement that fostered his development as world-renowned artist, scholar, curator, and collector. Joined by Tritobia Hayes Benjamin (B.F.A. ’68 and M.A. ’68), Associate Dean, Division of Fine Arts, and Director of the Howard University Gallery of Art, this conversation promises to be both lively and legendary. The artist conversation is presented as the inaugural lecture in The James A. Porter Distinguished Lectures on Art and History.

Reception immediately following.

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DAVID C. DRISKELL
David C. Driskell was born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1931. Educated in the public schools of North Carolina, he received his undergraduate degree in art at Howard University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Catholic University of America, both in Washington, D.C. He pursued post-graduate study in Art History at The Netherlands Institute for the History of Art in The Hague and has studied independently, African and African American cultures in Europe, Africa and Central South America. He is also the recipient of 12 honorary doctoral degrees in art. Driskell received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton on December 20, 2000 at a White House ceremony. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships, among them: three Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Danforth Foundation Fellowship and a Harmon Foundation Fellowship. In 1995, Driskell was named Distinguished University Professor of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park, a title he now holds as Emeritus. He is a member of the National Academy, the nation’s most prestigious and oldest art organization to which one can be elected.

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ABOUT THE SERIES
The Department of Art’s James A. Porter Distinguished Lecture Series on Art and History is established in honor of the memory and legacy of Professor James A. Porter, a graduate of Howard University’s Department of Art. Professor Porter, after further study at New York University, returned to teach at Howard University in 1928. He later served as chair of the Department of Art from 1953 to his death in 1970. His 1943 publication, Modern Negro Art, laid the foundation for the field of study in African American art history. It is the goal of the series to continue his legacy through scholarly exchange and artistic leadership.

Location:	Gallery of Art, Childers Hall, Division of Fine Arts
Price:	The lecture is free and open to the public.
Sponsor:	Department of Art
Contact:	Dr. Gwendolyn Everett geverett@howard.edu (202) 806-7047

Episode 56 of Africa Past and Present — the podcast about African history, culture, and politics — is now available at: http://afripod.aodl.org

In this episode, Dr. Gary Morgan, Director of the Michigan State University Museum, speaks on African masks and the Great Dance (Gule Wamkulu) in Chewa society, Malawi. He discusses the origins and characters of Gule Wamkulu, and gender, political, educational and health aspects of masks and their future in a globalizing world. This episode accompanies the 2011-12 MSU exhibition ‘Mask: Secrets and Revelations’ and the first major book on Gule Wamkulu with Claude Boucher of KuNgoni Centre of Culture and Art, Mua, Malawi.

Africa Past and Present is hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by Matrix — the  Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online  (http://matrix.msu.edu). Subscribe to the podcast on our website and on iTunes.

The Transdisciplinary Seminar on Afrofuturism will explore how representations of science, technology and social engineering intersect with visual cultural expressions of the African diaspora. Science fiction is the organizing trope that will unite all the guest presentations and works under consideration. Visiting artists and cultural theorists will lecture on the role of futuristic projection in African diasporic art, liteature, film and music. The expediency of science fiction as both a fractured mirror of historical experience and a projection of the collective desires of a displaced people will be discussed throughout the semester.

The Transdisciplinary Seminar on Afrofuturism features seven public lectures by guest artists and cultural theorists in the fall of 2011. These lectures are open to the public and will take place on Tuesdays at 6pm. The public lectures that are part of this seminar are produced with support from The Robert Lehman Foundation.
http://amt.parsons.edu/2011/08/26/transdisciplinary-seminar-on-afrofuturism-lecture-series/

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: CONVERSATIONS: AMONG FRIENDS

A public series presented by the Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art, Conversations: Among Friends explores works of art as reflections of their political and social contexts. Please feel free to share this invitation with friends, family, and colleagues. Tickets ($35) may be purchased at the Museum information desk, film desk, online, or through the Friends of Education office.

Conversations: Among Friends
FEATURING ARTISTS SENZENI MARASELA, VUYILE VOYIYA, AND SUE WILLIAMSON
WITH RIASON NAIDOO, DIRECTOR, SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL GALLERY

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

7:00 pm program | 8:15 pm reception

Doors open at 6:45 pm

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

The Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53 Street, New York City

 TICKETS ($35) MAY BE PURCHASED IN PERSON AT THE MUSEUM, ONLINE AT MOMA.ORG,

OR BY CALLING THE FRIENDS OF EDUCATION OFFICE  AT (212) 408-8517.

All tickets will be held at the door.

Please use The Ronald S. and Jo Carole Lauder Building entrance,
east of the Museum’s main entrance on Fifty-third Street.

This evening’s program presents a conversation between artists Senzeni Marasela, Vuyile Voyiya, and Sue Williamson, moderated by Riason Naidoo, Director, South African National Gallery, and featuring an introduction by Judy Hecker, Assistant Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, and organizer of Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now. Following the program, guests are invited to continue the conversation and meet the participants at an intimate reception in The Agnes Gund Garden Lobby.

Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now, on view through August 14 in The Paul J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries, presents nearly 80 prints, posters, books, and wall stencils created over the last five decades that demonstrate the exceptional reach, range, and impact of printed art in South Africa during and after a period of enormous upheaval. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection, this exhibition includes recent projects by Senzeni Marasela and Vuyile Voyiya, as well as a seminal work from the 1990s by Sue Williamson. Read more at MoMA.org/southafrica.

Continue reading “LEC: Conversations: Among Friends (South African Artists) @ MoMA”

Two Centuries of Black American Art
A 35th Anniversary Roundtable

David Driskell, Keynote Speaker

Saturday, May 14, 2011

2 pm

LACMA | Bing Theater
Free, No reservations

Two Centuries of Black American Art, organized for LACMA in 1976 by guest curator David Driskell, powerfully demonstrated the contributions of black artists to American art and art history from 1750 to the mid-twentieth century.

JOIN Professor David Driskell and distinguished panelists Dr. Bridget Cooks, Cecil Fergerson, and Dr. Samella Lewis to honor and consider the significance and impact of this historic exhibition. Franklin Sirmans, Curator, Contemporary Art, will moderate the discussion. Brooke Davis Anderson, Deputy Director, Curatorial Planning, and Austen Bailly, Associate Curator, American Art, will introduce the program.

Sponsored by LACMA’s American Art Council.

A Conversation between Tina Campt and Hazel V. Carby

Join us for a lecture and lively conversation with professors Tina Campt and Hazel V. Carby as they present and discuss their work on twentieth-century black European history; forms of political organization and social exclusion; and contemporary visual culture in a global context.

http://www.studiomuseum.org/event-calendar/event/imaging-black-europe-2011-03-24

Continue reading “LEC: Imaging Black Europe @ Goethe-Institut, March 24, 2011”

Link to video: http://www.artbabble.org/video/ngadc/wyeth-lecture-american-art-minstrelsy-uncorked

Minstrelsy “Uncorked”: Thomas Eakins’ Empathetic Realism
Richard J. Powell

Recorded on November 4, 2009, this podcast presents the fourth Wyeth Lecture in American Art, a biennial event hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Richard J. Powell focuses on Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) as uniquely empathetic among the many 19th-century artists who depicted African American performance and entertainment. Eakins’s Negro Boy Dancing (1887; Metropolitan Museum of Art) shows a young banjo player, an elderly teacher, and an adolescent dancer, evoking the American rage for the form of musical theater known as minstrelsy. Eakins’s watercolor, along with two oil-on-canvas studies at the National Gallery of Art, challenged the tendency of minstrelsy to employ racial ridicule and physical exaggeration. Instead, Powell argues, Eakins adhered to a painterly realism as well as his own brand of empathy and ethics.

Thomas Eakins, Study for “Negro Boy Dancing”: The Boy, probably 1877, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Continue reading “LEC: Richard Powell 2009 Wyeth Lecture in American Art Podcast”