Event Details

We are pleased to announce this year's speaker for the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Lecture!

We have invited artist Faith Ringgold to speak on April 1, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. in McConnell.

Faith Ringgold began her artistic career more than 35 years ago as a painter. Today, she is best known for her painted story quilts -- art that combines painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is in the permanent collection of many museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Her first book, Tar Beach was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, among numerous other honors. She has written and illustrated eleven children's books. She has received more than 75 awards, fellowships, citations and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards and seventeen honorary doctorates, one of which is from her alma mater The City College of New York.  She is a professor of art at the University of California in San Diego, California.

The lecture she is planning to give at Simon's Rock is titled "More than 50 Years".  According to her website, "In this survey lecture Ms. Ringgold begins in the early 1960's with political imagery and first hand accounts about the civil rights movement in the 'American People Series'.  Her inspiring, often humorous and always very human stories will illustrate her life's work as an artist, activist, author, teacher and parent through the evolution of an awesome body of work that constrains more than 100 paintings.  Images from the Women on a Bridge Series, 1988, The French Collection, 1991, the American Collection, 1997 and the Coming to Jones Rd Series 2000 will be included."

We hope you will be able to join us for what will be a memorable event!