WPI Webinar Series – Enduring Legacy- Conversations On Romare Bearden
This series runs through May.
Use this link to register for the series wpi art
Brought to you by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) publishes of the Romare Bearden Digital Catalogue Raisonné.
Thirty-six years after the death of Romare Bearden, his art and life continue to impact contemporary artists and other enthusiasts. His art is one of multiple inheritances that reference European and American modernism, dadaism, and civil rights-era artists – and Bearden’s own activism would align him strongly with the latter. Bearden made powerful statements about the Black experience while also situating that experience within the universal. His work defies simple description and categorization, and inspires new avenues of engagement that resonates with our present moment and contemporary questions of race in America.
This event series features three speakers whose scholarship and practice engage with Bearden’s formulation of the visual world: current Romare Bearden Fellow at the Saint Louis Art Museum Charlie Farrell, independent art historian Anne Monahan, and multi-medium artist Kahlil Robert Irving. Each event includes a short presentation from the speakers followed by an extended conversation with questions from the audience.
Bearden with Betty Blayton and Children’s Art Carnival students; “Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1972; Romare Bearden Papers [ysqdockk], The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.
Thursday, May 8, 2024 at 1:00 pm ET
Curating Romare Bearden with Charlie Farrell
Charlie Farrell will discuss the exhibition Romare Bearden: Resonances at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The show features Bearden’s important collage, Summertime (1967), alongside other collage works from the Museum’s collection. The aim is to trace Bearden’s influence and relationships with other artists, grounding him in a continuum of Black creativity.
Thursday, May 15, 2024 at 1:00 pm ET
Situating the Projections with Anne Monahan
Anne Monahan will discuss her chapter on Bearden from her manuscript in progress, “A Usable Past”: Race, Figuration, and Politics in the 1960s. Her research on Bearden reconsiders his breakthrough Projections exhibition in 1964, exploring his turn to photomontage, how race factored into the works’ reception, and the impact of this work on a rising generation of artists of color.
Anne Monahan is an independent art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art. She is the author of Horace Pippin, American Modern (Yale, 2020), and Faith Ringgold: Die (MoMA, 2018). Her research has also appeared in Art Journal, The Metropolitan Museum Journal, Nka, edited volumes, and museum catalogues. She lives and works in New York
Thursday, May 22, 2024 at 1:00 pm ET
Conceptualizing Black Joy with Kahlil Robert Irving
Kahlil Robert Irving will discuss his artistic practice, including the pieces that were included in the recent exhibition, In Common: New Approaches with Romare Bearden, held at the New School in New York City. The show featured the work of six contemporary artists alongside that of Bearden.
Kahlil Robert Irving’s sculptures, paintings, and collages subtly describe how to navigate being Black in the United States. His collages, influenced by modern digital culture, show how materials can be interpolated and pieced together to highlight Black joy while shedding light on violent white people and their ideologies. Irving received his BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the New Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and Archeology of the Present at the Kemper Art Museum.
Series of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute
Publishers of the Romare Bearden Catalogue Raisonné
For more information and to register for all four series: Use this link: wpi art