Events Calendar

Posing Beauty Posing Questions

Admission is free.

Reception to follow.

Join us for a lively conversation examining and challenging conventional perspectives on identity, beauty, cosmopolitanism and community in Africa and the African diaspora. The event will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition Posing Beauty in African American Culture, on display at the USC Fisher Museum of Art from September 7 through December 3.

Moderated by Deborah Willis, curator of the Posing Beauty exhibition and chair of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, the panel will feature artist Carrie Mae Weems, Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Franklin Sirmans and USC history professor Robin D. G. Kelley. They will consider various artistic, theoretical and regional perspectives about aesthetics and the politics of Black beauty. They will also encourage the audience to conduct diverse visual readings of the portraits in the exhibition.

Panelist Bios

Deborah Willis (Moderator) is the chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She was a 2005 Guggenheim fellow and Fletcher fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation’s leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture.

The highly acclaimed artist Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art that has employed photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation and, most recently, video. Her work investigates family relationships, gender roles and the histories of racism, sexism, class and various political systems and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the world.

Robin D. G. Kelley is a professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of many books, including Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. Kelley’s essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including The Nation, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, ColorLines, Code, Utne Reader, the Journal of American History and Metropolis.

Franklin Sirmans is the head of the Terri and Michael Smooke Department and curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He previously served as curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection in Houston and curatorial advisor at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His notable exhibitions include NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith and Basquiat, which originated at the Brooklyn Museum and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Organized by the USC Fisher Museum of Art.

Photo: Lauren Kelley, Pickin', 2007

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - Grand Ballroom

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski