The George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, an Austin-based organization dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of African American culture, history, and aesthetic expression, will host artist Deborah Roberts for an artist talk and book signing on Saturday, December 2, 2023.
Installation view, “Deborah Roberts: I’m” at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2021. Artwork © Deborah Roberts. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Colin Doyle.
Ms. Roberts is best known for her mixed-media collages featuring young Black boys and girls. By using images from U.S. history, Black culture and history, and popular culture, she critiques beauty standards, highlights societal pressures, and challenges stereotypes related to Black youth. Ms. Roberts received her MFA from Syracuse University and currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.
Ms. Roberts’ work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond; and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, among other institutions. In 2019 she was a finalist for the 2019 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and this year she received the 2023 Texas Medal of Arts Award in Visual Arts. The Contemporary Austin organized a presentation of her work in 2021.
Deborah Roberts. Image courtesy Texas Cultural Trust.
Her new monograph, Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Art/Work, is published by Radius Books and includes a foreword by Dawoud Bey, texts by Carolyn Jean Martin and Ekow Eshun, and a conversation between Ms. Roberts and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis. The 240-page book features 125 images of works by the artist spanning the past two decades.
“Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Art/Work,” published by Radius Books
The program runs from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, December 2, 2023 at the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, which is located at 1165 Angelina St. For more information, visit the Carver’s Facebook page.
