Artist Sonya Clark in Conversation
By Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Short-listed by the New York Times as one of the “must-see” exhibitions of the fall arts season, There Is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art closes at the Museum on Sunday, January 30. If you have not already seen the exhibition, we highly recommend it. Featuring more than sixty artworks, it explores the representation of Black women over the last 250 years and highlights the achievements of more than two dozen Black women artists.
On Friday, January 28, the Museum will present a final capstone program in conjunction with the exhibition. We hope that you will join us on-line at noon, when renowned artist Sonya Clark (American, born 1967) presents an engaging discussion on her artistic practice and career. She will be joined in conversation with Elizabeth S. Humphrey ’14, the curator of There Is a Woman in Every Color.
Clark is Professor of Art at Amherst College. Especially well-known for her work in fiber art, she has exhibited in over 350 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Of note, Sonya Clark: Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know was organized in 2019 by the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia before traveling to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
About herself, Clark has written: “I was born in Washington, DC to a psychiatrist from Trinidad and a nurse from Jamaica. I gained an appreciation for craft and the value of the handmade primarily from my maternal grandmother who was a professional tailor. Many of my family members taught me the value of a well-told story and so it is that I value the stories held in objects.”
After There Is a Woman in Every Color closes at the end of January, it will travel to three museums in other parts of the country. Beginning in the summer of 2022, it will be on view at the Tweed Art Museum at the University of Minnesota-Duluth before traveling to the El Paso Museum of Art in Texas and the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. The exhibition’s national tour is being sponsored by the Art Bridges Foundation, a philanthropic organization devoted to expanding access to American art and fostering collaborations between museums. Representatives from these three museums will be in Brunswick to see the exhibition in January. On that occasion, Humphrey, who is now a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware, will share her insights about the project and discuss strategies for engaging audiences of different ages and backgrounds.
The lecture is free, but requires pre-registration. Register here.
Frank GoodyearCo-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art