ART | BLACKNESS | DIASPORA is a yearlong visiting artists series that highlights the significant contributions of African and African American artists to contemporary culture.

It advances the foundational social justice mission of Brandeis University and the Rose Art Museum; challenges racial biases that have excluded innovative artists of color from the art historical canon; and supports our commitment to exhibit, teach, and research the histories and cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Conceived in early 2014, national events in the subsequent months have affirmed the necessity of this initiative and infused it with a greater sense of urgency. The Brandeis community is honored to welcome and learn from inspiring art, artists and scholars, who affirm our avid conviction that black lives—and the myriad creative expressions that reflect them—matter profoundly.

ART | BLACKNESS | DIASPORA is a Brandeis Arts Council project presented by the Department of Fine Arts, African and Afro-American Studies and the Rose Art Museum.

All events are followed by a reception and are free and open to the public.

Artist talk: Jennie C. Jones

Thursday, February 26, 5–6:20pm
Mandel Center for the Humanities, Barbara Mandel Auditorium (G3)

Jennie C. Jones explains her work as an overlapping of histories, residing “at the intersection of art history, music history and black history, layering the formal language of modern art—abstraction and minimalism—over the conceptual and technical strategies of avant-garde jazz.” Jones will discuss her work and her desire to present a “more complex and historically inclusive version of modernism” in a public lecture that coincides with Brandeis Professor Jasmine Johnson’s course on “Black Feminist Thought.”

Gallery talk: Jennie C. Jones

Friday, February 27, 1:30–2:45pm
Rose Art Museum, Mildred S. Lee Gallery

Jennie C. Jones will speak at the Rose Art Museum in conversation with Rose curatorial assistant Caitlin Julia Rubin. Jones’s painting Decrescendo with Ledger Tone (2014) is on display alongside objects from the Rose Collection in this semester’s Collection in Focus exhibition, curated by Rubin in collaboration with Jones.

Gallery talk: Dr. Christina Knight

Wednesday, March 11, 3:30–4:45pm
Rose Art Museum, Gerald S. and Sandra Fineberg Gallery

Art historian and African American Studies specialist Dr. Christina Knight (Bowdoin College and Harvard University) will discuss paintings and sculptures from the Rose’s New Acquisitions exhibition. The show presents masterpieces by Jack Whitten, Mark Bradford, Howardena Pindell, Sam Gilliam, Al (Alvin) Loving, and Melvin Edwards, all objects that entered the Rose collection in the last 18 months.

Artist talk: Melvin Edwards

Friday, April 17, 1:30–2:45pm
Rose Art Museum, Gerald S. and Sandra Fineberg Gallery

Pioneering African American artist Melvin Edwards will join Brandeis Professor Chad Williams (Chair of African and Afro-American Studies) and Christopher Bedford (Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum) for a conversation in front of sculptures from Edwards’s “Lynch Fragments” series, currently on display as part of the Rose Art Museum’s presentation of new acquisitions.

For more information on the series and related events, please visit our lectures The Department of Fine Arts, The Rose Museum or contact Gannit Ankori at gannit@brandeis.edu.

ART | BLACKNESS | DIASPORA

Spring 2015

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