Boston, MA – Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery (BUAG) is proud to present Making Connections: The Art & Life of Herbert Gentry, an exhibition curated by Ph.D. candidate Rachel Tolano, a Jan and Warren Adelson Fellow in American Art.
Making Connections: The Art & Life of Herbert Gentry
Dates and Events: Friday, January 31 – Sunday, March 30, 2014
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 30, 6–8pm
Location: Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery (855 Commonwealth Ave)
Exhibition and Gallery Events are Free and Open to the Public
Making Connections focuses on the transatlantic career of the American abstract painter, Herbert Gentry (1919-2003), who was raised in Harlem and spent his career shuttling between his home bases in Paris, Scandinavia, and New York, relying on the Euro-American café culture to help facilitate social relationships and a sense of community wherever he happened to be. Gentry was one of many peripatetic, sociable members of the avant-garde who was less interested in national ties and more concerned with personal bonds shared with fellow world citizens. The web-like entanglements of abstract, expressive figures and faces in Gentry’s art visually convey the networks of connections forged throughout his life.
This exhibition includes dozens of Gentry’s semi-figural abstract paintings and a few select paintings, prints, and sculptures by the artist’s closest friends and colleagues, such as Romare Bearden, Beauford Delaney, Ed Clark, Harold Cousins, Kosta Alex, Corneille, and Karel Appel. Items from Gentry’s personal archive will also be featured.
In addition, Making Connections has planned a dynamic and ambitious schedule of events to discuss the international, cross-cultural connections that informed Gentry’s semi-figural abstract style.
Making Connections: The Art & Life of Herbert Gentry
Schedule of Events
Wednesday, February 5, 6pm
Making Connections Lecture: Dr. Nikki A. Greene
Assistant Professor of Art, Wellesley College
Dr. Nikki Greene received her Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 2010. Her research has included examining African American and African identities, the body, feminism, and music–particularly jazz–in modern and contemporary art. She held the Barra Foundation Fellowship in the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where she catalogued the African American art collections. In January of 2013, Dr. Greene gave a series of lectures on African Art at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.
Wednesday, February 26, 4pm
Guided Tour of Making Connections by exhibition curator and Ph.D. Candidate, Rachel Tolano
Wednesday, March 26, 6pm
Making Connections Lecture: Dr. Karen Kurczynski
Assistant Professor of Art History at UMass Amherst
Karen Kurczynski teaches modern and contemporary art history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of a forthcoming monograph on Asger Jorn based on her Ph.D. dissertation (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2005), and co-curator of an exhibition on Jorn’s dialogues with other artists at the Museum Jorn in Denmark for the centennial of his birth in 2014. Her writing on modern and contemporary art, politics, and the Situationist International has appeared in Art Papers, Artforum, BlackFlash, October, Rutgers Art Review, Res, Women’s Art Journal, and Third Text.
A catalog will accompany Making Connections, complete with color plates, a foreword by Patricia Hills, Boston University Professor of Art History, and essays by Rachel Tolano and Mary Anne Rose Gentry, Ed.D., executor of the Herbert Gentry estate.
Please visit bu.edu/art for the most updated event details.
About Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery (BUAG)
Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery is located at 855 Commonwealth Avenue, inside the College of Fine Arts. The gallery is located on the Boston University campus (BU West T stop on the “B” Green Line). Gallery hours are Tuesday–Friday from 11am–5pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 1–5pm (closed Mondays and holidays). For more information, visit bu.edu/art.