January 24 - March 6, 2020
The Spring 2020 Visiting Artist Lecture Series will bring artists Hannah Black (Jan. 24), Michael Queenland (Jan. 31), Malik Gaines (Feb. 7) and Nicole Miller (March 6) to campus. From film, composition and dance to photography, performance and sculpture, each lecturer brings a unique perspective to share on contemporary art and its greater sociopolitical impact.
“Much of the most exciting and challenging work in the contemporary art field is being done by African American artists,” said VADA chair John Sparagana, who worked with VADA professors Lisa Lapinski and Natasha Bowdoin and CAAAS director Anthony Pinn on curating the lineup of speakers.
“We wanted to bring in artists working, thinking and writing on the cutting edge of contemporary art, driven to a significant extent from the perspective of African American experience,” Sparagana said. “We were successful in attracting high-profile artists doing really fascinating work in various disciplines for this collaborative series.”
Each Friday lecture will be free and open to the public, thanks to support from the School of Humanities Dean’s Office. They will begin at noon in the Rice Media Center cinema.
When Black wrote an open letter called “The Painting Must Go,” about a work of art in the 2017 Whitney Biennial portraying the famed photograph of Emmett Till’s open-casket funeral, conversations about her opinion piece revolved as much around contemporary art as issues of free speech, the appropriation of black culture and institutionalized racism.
“The arts have tremendous reach,” Pinn said. “Artists speak to and about a world that has impact beyond any particular discipline. They reflect on our world, offering new ways of seeing and thinking that are of benefit regardless of one’s particular field of study or life circumstances.”
Black voices in art is a theme that winds across the Rice campus this semester following last year’s launch of CAAAS.
Opening Jan. 24, the spring exhibition at the Moody Center for the Arts, “Radical Revisionists,” considers race, representation and the long-term effects of colonialization through the work of 10 contemporary African artists across three galleries.
Lecture: January 24, 2020 | 12–1 pm
Hannah Black
Lecture: January 31, 2020 | 12–1 pm
Michael Queenland
Lecture: February 7, 2020 | 12–1 pm
Malik Gaines
Lecture: March 6, 2020 | 12–1 pm
Nicole Miller
6100 Main St.
Houston, 77005 TX
713-348-0000
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