Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Lecture: Reimagine representation with artist Nina Chanel Abney

The SCAD Museum of Art welcomes acclaimed artist Nina Chanel Abney as this year’s distinguished Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Lecturer. Presented in connection with the artist’s exhibition Big Butch Energy/Synergy in the museum’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies, this lecture focuses on Abney’s illustrious career as one of the leading practitioners of her generation. As an artist working in the lineage of Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), telling stories of the accomplishments and challenges of African Americans, Abney will address the aesthetic principles that frame her explorations of race, gender, and politics, and speak specifically about works in her SCAD MOA exhibition, which depict various expressions of Black womanhood through coming-of-age narratives. Abney will be joined by Brooklyn-based arts writer Shirley Ngozi Nwangwa, who engages similar themes in work for publications including The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation Magazine, ARTnews Magazine, The New Yorker, and others.

About the artist
Nina Chanel Abney (b. 1982, Chicago) has been honored with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; the Gordon Parks Foundation, Pleasantville, N.Y.; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and the Contemporary Dayton, Ohio. Her solo exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, N.C., toured to the Chicago Cultural Center; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. Abney was recently commissioned to transform Lincoln Center’s new David Geffen Hall façade in New York, drawing from the cultural heritage of the neighborhood previously known as San Juan Hill that was composed of African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Puerto Rican families. Her recent public mural at the Miami Worldcenter was similarly inspired by the historic Black neighborhood Overtown. Abney’s work is held in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Bronx Museum, New York; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Rubell Family Collection, Fla.; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; the Nasher Museum of Art; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among others.

About the Evans Center
Established in 2011, the SCAD Museum of Art’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies celebrates the imaginative breadth and expressive legacy of African American art and culture. Through experimental public programs, immersive workshops, riveting lectures, and topical symposia, the Evans Center immerses students and community members in the rich tapestry of Black expression.

This event is presented by SCAD MOA’s Evans Center for African American Studies with generous support from the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation. 

Image: Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York