EYEMINDED: LECTURE AND READING
During Open Studio Saturday on July 14 from noon to 1:30 PM, McColl Center for Visual Art is pleased to present a free lecture and reading with author and Knight Artist-in-Residence, Dr. Kellie Jones. The presentation will feature selections from her book EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (Duke University Press 2011), which has been named one of the top art books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly. A limited number of books will be available for purchase at the event.
Reflecting Jones’s curatorial sensibility, this collection is structured as a dialogue between her writings and works by her parents, her sister Lisa Jones, and her husband Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr.. EyeMinded offers a glimpse into the family conversation that has shaped and sustained Jones, insight into the development of her critical and curatorial vision, and a survey of some of the most important figures in contemporary art. A brief Q&A will follow the reading and lecture.
A daughter of the poets Hettie Jones and 
Amiri Baraka, Kellie Jones grew up immersed in a world of artists, musicians, and writers in Manhattan’s East Village and absorbed in black nationalist ideas about art, politics, and social justice across the river in Newark. The activist vision of art and culture that she learned in those two communities, and especially from her family, has shaped her life and work as an art critic and curator. Jones’ brings attention to the work of African American, African, Latin American, and women artists who have challenged established art practices. Included are interviews that Jones’ has conducted with the painter Howardena Pindell, the installation and performance artist David Hammons, and the Cuban sculptor Kcho appear along with pieces on the photographers Dawoud Bey, Lorna Simpson, and Pat Ward Williams; the sculptor Martin Puryear; the assemblage artist Betye Saar; and the painters Jean-Michel Basquiat, Norman Lewis, and Al Loving.
Dr. Kellie Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latino/a and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. Dr. Jones was named an Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellow in 2008 for her lifetime of writing on visual art. The fellowship commemorates the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954 which struck down legal segregation; it recognizes candidates whose work honors and furthers the spirit of the statute. In 2005 she was the inaugural recipient of the David C. Driskell Award in African American Art and Art History from the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and a Scholar-in-Residence, at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy.
Admission and parking is free. All ages welcome. For more information about the event, contact us at 704-332-5535 or email Angela Grauel at agrauel@mccollcenter.org.
>> Can't make it? Join us on Friday, July 27 at a free gallery reception to meet Kellie Jones and the rest of our current residents before they end their term.