John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art 2020, A Tribute to David C. Driskell: Part 2, Studio Visit with Curlee Raven Holton

Description

Curlee Raven Holton,
artist, art historian, master printmaker, David M. and Linda Roth Professor of
Art Emeritus, and director (2012?present), David C. Driskell Center for the
Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African
Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park

Prior
to his appointment as director of the Driskell Center, Curlee Raven Holton had
a long-standing relationship with David C. Driskell as a friend, fellow artist
and academic, and master printmaker. During this behind-the-scenes filming at
Raven Fine Art Editions on August 19, 2020, Holton shares the history of their
printmaking journey through works created together?beginning in 2003 with Driskell?s
request to make Brown
Derby
and later Woman in
Interior,
both in the Gallery?s collection. Driskell modeled a generous sense of humanity
in his practice as a scholar and teacher, as well as in the studio. He valued
works by African American artists as reflections of the past and as deserving
of greater illumination and significance in the present. Driskell understood these
as records of achievement and expression of existential reality that these
artists are here, seen, and celebrated. For Holton, Driskell?s ?life and career
were a reaffirmation of the goodness of spirit and goodness of creative genius,
and how it could serve us.? The fourth annual John Wilmerding Symposium on
American Art was held in partnership with the David C. Driskell Center for the
Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African
Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Skowhegan School of
Painting & Sculpture. This program was made
possible by a grant from the Alice L. Walton Foundation.