Talk | Terrains and Galaxies of Abstraction

As a participant in CultureWorks’ artoberVA, VMFA is offering a “Pay-What-You-Will” ticket price for this talk. Choose your price during the reservation process.

VMFA welcomes Columbia University’s Dr. Kellie Jones, who will discuss African American abstract painter Al Loving (1935–2005) and his work, from his earliest explorations of purely optical geometries in the 1960s, to the edges of craft (things made “by hand”) in later years. This talk situates Loving within a universe of other visual artists who found creative freedom in the seemingly boundless terrain of late 20th-century abstract art making. While painting proved to be a core value, sculpture as hard edge also went soft, inspired by bodies in motion, whether in performance or in the world.

To watch from the comfort of home, visit our livestream page.

IMAGE Square (detail), 1973–74, Al Loving (American, 1935–2005), quilt canvas and mixed media, 93 x 93 in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Price and Elaine Rogers Collection, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment, and Sydney and Frances Lewis Endowment Fund, 2024.316

About the Speaker
Dr. Kellie Jones is Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology and a Professor in the Department African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. A member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Jones was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2016. She is the author of EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art and South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Her recent edited volumes include October Files: David Hammons and, with Tumelo Mosaka, Black Curators Matter: Conversations on Art and Change.

This program is supported in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts