“Revisiting the Spiral Group,” will be hosted by the Romare Bearden Foundation on Thursday, July 27th, at 6pm EST on Zoom. The event commemorates the 60th anniversary of the founding of Spiral, an African American artists’ collective co-founded by Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff.
A conversation with Richard Mayhew, the oldest living member of Spiral, and Courtney J. Martin, the director of the Yale Center for British Art will be moderated by Camara Holloway, project manager for the Romare Bearden catalogue raisonné at the Wildenstein Plattner Institute and ACRAH co-director.
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.
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.
The Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) is seeking a research intern to support the Romare Bearden Digital Catalogue Raisonné project. The intern will assist primarily with the compilation of images related to the art and career of the artist Romare Bearden (1911-1988). This is a twelve-week paid summer internship with a time commitment of twenty-eight hours per week, starting June 6th, 2022.
Responsibilities
The primary assignment will be the task of locating and obtaining high-resolution reproductions of works of art for internal use and future publication. The intern will be responsible for identifying and corresponding with relevant parties to secure permissions. The internship will be conducted as a hybrid of in-person meetings at the WPI office and remote work via Google Meet. Visits to NYC-area research libraries will also be required as necessary.
Qualifications
Graduate-level work in art history, museum studies, or a related field.
Knowledge about African American art, with emphasis on provenance research and the art market.
Familiarity with Artstor and other primary-source image repositories.
Proficiency with Google Workspace.
Proficiency with relational computer databases. Intern will be trained on a proprietary database.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Exceptionally detail oriented.
Ability to work independently.
For consideration, applicants should submit a resume with a cover letter and references by Friday, May 20, 2022 to camara.holloway@wpi-art.org.
ACRAH 