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Impressions/ Expressions: Reconsidering Black American Graphics and Multiples
The Robert P. Madison Family Distinguished Lecture in African and African American Art
Tags for: Impressions/ Expressions: Reconsidering Black American Graphics and Multiples
- Lecture
- Ticket Required
Saturday, March 29, 2025, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University
Location: Gartner Auditorium
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Free; Ticket Required
Speaker
- Richard J. Powell
Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Powell is the John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University, where he has taught since 1989. He studied at Morehouse College and Howard University before earning his doctorate in art history at Yale University. Along with teaching courses in American art, the arts of the African Diaspora, and contemporary visual studies, he has written extensively on topics ranging from primitivism to postmodernism, including such titles as Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991), Black Art: A Cultural History (1997 and 2002), and Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (2008).
About The Event
In the fall of 1979, printmaker and burgeoning scholar Richard J. Powell curated for New York’s Studio Museum in Harlem a survey exhibition of prints by African Americans. Spanning almost two centuries and tracking the various modes of image making and creative communication by way of the art of printmaking, Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics featured artworks by an array of African American artists and printmakers, including Henry Ossawa Tanner, Elizabeth Catlett, Robert Blackburn, Margo Humphrey, and many of the etchers, lithographers, and linocut artists affiliated with Cleveland’s legendary Karamu House. In conjunction with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s exhibition Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community, Powell—now a professor at Duke University and a recognized authority on African American art and culture—revisits his history-making exhibition, highlighting some of the artists and prints featured in that show, as well as updating his original Impressions/Expressions checklist with more recent graphics and multiples by such contemporary figures as Nina Chanel Abney, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Alison Saar, William Villalongo, and Kara Walker.
Sponsors
All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Principal support is provided by Dieter and Susan M. Kaesgen. Major annual support is provided by Brenda and Marshall Brown, David and Robin Gunning, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Medical Mutual of Ohio, Gail C. and Elliott L. Schlang, Shurtape Technologies, and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. Generous annual support is provided by Gini and Randy Barbato, the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Char and Chuck Fowler, the Giant Eagle Foundation, Robin Heiser, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Logsdon Family Fund for Education, Sarah Nash, Courtney and Michael Novak, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, the Pickering Foundation, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, the Sally and Larry Sears Fund for Education Endowment, Roy Smith, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Trilling Family Foundation, Jack and Jeanette Walton, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is funded in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.
Education programs are supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.
