THIS YEAR MARYLAND INSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART (MICA) WILL HOST A SERIES OF EVENTS TO MARK THE LEROY E. HOFFBERGER SCHOOL OF PAINTING 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION.

This panel will explore what representation means, especially as it relates to the broad range of African American and diasporic African experience. Contemporary art is becoming increasingly pluralistic; however, artistic production by Black artists that features figurative references or cultural indices of Blackness is still often considered marginal. Although Black artists continue to produce work that repeats this self-determined imagery, there are new and emerging challenges to greater and more productive futures. What is at stake for Black artists who present unsettling truths? What is at stake for Black artists who choose to speak only for themselves as individual artists inspired by personal experience?

Poet, critic, and MICA faculty member Christopher Stackhouse will moderate the panel with artists Arvie Smith and Zoë Charlton. Zoë Charlton’s drawings depict culturally loaded objects and undressed bodies. She is Associate Professor at American University and has exhibited at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem, and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Arvie Smith transforms histories of oppression into lyrical paintings. He earned his MFA from MICA’s LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting in 1992 and is Professor Emeritus at Pacific Northwest College of Art. In 2015, he received a Distinguished Service Award from the Oregon Art Education Association. He is represented by Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore. Christopher Stackhouse’s contributions to artist monographs include Kara Walker’s Dust Jackets for The Niggerati and Basquiat—The Unknown Notebooks. His writing has been published in American Poets, Modern Painters, Art in America, BOMB, and The Brooklyn Rail. He is a frequent lecturer and instructor at MICA. Sponsored by MICA’s Office of Graduate Studies and the President's Task Force on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Globalization.

Image credit: Alana Bergstrom (MICA LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting MFA Class of 2014), Understand, acrylic on canvas, 46 x 50 inches, 2014.