2024 Program Schedule

Sunday, May 19, Taft Art Museum, 316 Pike Street, Tour@ 2 p.m. / African Modernism in America

African Modernism in America features more than 60 dynamic and vivid works of art created in Africa during the 1950s and ‘60s. Co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and Fisk University Galleries, the exhibition explores the relationships formed between African artists and American patrons, artists, and cultural organizations amid the interlocking histories of civil rights and decolonization, and the Cold War. The inventive nature of the works in this exhibition challenges the assumptions of the time about African art being isolated to a “primitive past.” Some pieces took inspiration from early Christian art, West African sculpture, and Nigerian literature, while others reflect the influences of American jazz and modern European art.

Past Programs

Sunday, January 7, 3–5 p.m., Gallery 105

We will view the Smithsonian: Black and African American Art Tour, Part 1, exploring works in the National Gallery of Art collection, including works by Joshua Johnson, Edmonia Lewis, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Horace Pippin, Augusta Savage, and many others.

Sunday, February 4, 3–5 p.m., Gallery 105

Brent Billingsley is an artist and an empowering voice behind disenfranchised youth. Billingsley will share his motivation and the process for his creative expression. He graduated in 2013 from Miami University with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with a concentration in Printmaking and from the University of Cincinnati in 2015 with a Master’s in Social Work. 

Sunday, March 3, 3–5 p.m., Gallery 105

We will view the Smithsonian: Black and African American Art Tour, Part 2, exploring works in the collection of National Gallery of Art, including works by James Vander Zee, Richmond Barthe’, Romare Bearden, Alma Thomas, and many others.

Sunday, April 7, 3–5 p.m.

Julie Aronson, Curator of American Art, will guide us through the exhibition Whitfield Lovell: Passages. Lovell is a contemporary African American artist who is known primarily for his drawings of African American individuals from the first half of the 20th century. Lovell creates these drawings in pencil, oil stick, or charcoal on paper, wood, or directly on walls.

Cynthia Collins, Chair

Linda Meador, Secretary

Myra Paige-Livingston, Treasurer

Katrina Mundy, Past Chair

Consuelo Harris, Member-at-Large